Shadow Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa

A _Shadow_/_Spiderman_ Short Story by Stephensmat and Scarlet

Stephen Cranston, billionaire businessman and self-confirmed workaholic, was packing for a vacation.

At least, that was what an outside observer might gather as they watched the twenty-something billionaire bustling busily around his mansion. An insider who knew of Stephen's other life--the Master of Darkness the underworld knew as The Shadow--would perhaps instead deduce that Stephen was gathering evidence needed for his alter ego to solve a crime or to work on a multi-layered criminal caper.

Whatever position the observer might hold mattered not as far as Stephen was concerned as he busily gathered papers and other items from various hidden compartments and safes throughout the numerous rooms of Cranston Manor, stuffing them into a duffle bag as he went.

In the midst of all this activity, his cell phone rang.

Stephen reached up and tapped the hands-free earpiece inside his right ear. "Stephen Cranston."

"You know, I thought you'd retired from reporting for good," Clyde Marsh, editor of the New York _Classic_ and now one of The Shadow's most valuable agents, taunted.

Stephen gave an almost shadowy chuckle. "Only when it suits me. So I take it you liked the story?"

"I wouldn't say that. I'd say instead that you'd best rehearse the next speech in your Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech stack. This is really, really good. When did you have time to do the investigation into this identity theft/extortion ring?"

"I don't think I really need to answer that," Stephen responded, closing a safe.

"Oh," Marsh said. "Should have guessed. So, when should I expect a follow-up piece?"

"Whenever I get called again, just like everyone else. You know that."

"And you know I don't buy it. I've seen you work until you drop on investigations, and you can't tell me that it's because he's got a gun to your head and is making you do it. Face it, Cranston, you _love_ this stuff. You can't live without the big-time crime investigations. I give it a year before you sell off your company and come back to full-time reporting."

"I'd take that bet, except you don't have enough money for the kinds of wagers I'd make." Stephen checked the packet of papers he'd just removed from the safe as he headed down the hall to another room. "Really, Marsh, I'm getting out of the reporting business. I just need to dot all the 'I's and cross all the 'T's. Besides, he's probably figured out how to use me even in this role. That's his job."

Marsh sighed. "Yeah, I do. Sometimes I forget that we're all just cogs in the big machine. Speaking of cogs…I notice Sarah Branson applied for the new city reporter vacancy. Should I give her special consideration?"

Stephen hesitated a moment as he pulled back a picture on the wall and began dialing the combination to another wall lockbox. "That's entirely up to you. Really, you should consider her as a blank slate. I'll never be 'Stephen Cranston, hottest reporter in town' again, and I'm not sure Sarah should be considered 'Stephen 2.0'."

"O.K. Can I at least stick her in your office?"

Stephen laughed. "Why not? She gets along with Peter just fine."

Marsh laughed along with him. "Yeah, when he's actually here and all that. What's up with him deciding to go back to school all of a sudden?"

"I had nothing to do with that." A pause. "Well, O.K., I had only about a million things to do with that. Connors got a new grant for his biophysics work…"

"No doubt funded by Cranston Industries, I take it?"

"…and Peter decided to take advantage of the opportunity to go back and work on his Master's…"

"…and keep an eye on Connors to make sure he doesn't start generating giant squirrels and mutated monkeys, right?"

"That's our little secret," Stephen said in a slight warning tone.

"Got it," Marsh replied. Then he gave a chuckle. "Peter Parker, grad student, Pulitzer-winning photographer, love stud. He's dating that actress chick, right?"

"Supposedly. Young love and all that. I'm not into gossip." Stephen pulled out a velvet-covered black box from the safe.

"Liar."

"All right. I'm not into gossip that doesn't have to do with solving mysterious crimes."

"At least you're being more honest with yourself. Next you'll actually admit you're secretly involved with your pretty young replacement."

"I'll confess to an affair with Peter's girlfriend before I do that." Stephen closed the safe door and put the picture back in place.

Marsh laughed. "_You_ are one sick man."

"You're just now figuring this out?" Stephen laughed out loud, then groaned when his earpiece let out a "beep". He checked the display on his cell phone. "My secretary's calling to hound me. Is there anything else you want to harass me about?"

"Not for now, at least. Keep in touch."

"Will do." Stephen pushed the button on his earpiece. "Hello, Chloe. What did I forget to do now?"

"It's not what you _didn't_ do, it's what you _did_," Chloe Bryant responded, sounding annoyed. "You wiped four weeks worth of appointments off your calendar last night."

"Did I?" Stephen traveled down the hallway of his mansion at a rapid clip as he spoke, finally reaching his bedroom and tossing paperwork into a suitcase on his bed.

"You're too smart to play dumb, Mister, so don't even try it. Do I have to remind you that there are a gazillion people who call me every day wanting to know when you're free to discuss whatever trivial travail they're experiencing that they expect Cranston Industries' President to solve, or are you going to come clean about what's going on?"

"O.K., you caught me. I'm off on vacation for the next four weeks." He flipped open a false panel on one of the bags.

"You? On vacation? No way."

"Darn, can't fool you. O.K., I'm organizing an orgy with my groupies at one of my secret rendezous hideaways." He flipped open a side panel on his armoire, pulled out a strangely-patterned satchel, then pulled out one of the many versions of his Shadow wardrobe and stuffed it into the satchel, giving it a toss onto his bed when it was done.

"Now _that_ I would believe."

"Good. Use that excuse when anyone asks where I am." With that, he pushed the button on his earpiece and hung up the call. He didn't have time to be taking any calls right now, and The Shadow's upcoming mission could not leave any traces to Stephen Cranston's life.

Taking only a moment to admire the new satchel designed by one of his engineers ostensibly for a contract with the CIA, a satchel that would hide its contents under any kind of X-Ray or other luggage scanning equipment--instead reflecting a collection of harmless-looking clothing through its specially patterned surface to the eyes of the scanners--he stuffed the satchel into a false panel on the large rolling wardrobe bag, then headed downstairs for a rendezvous with his agents.

Scene Break

Peter made his way into Stephen's study, checking his watch. "Sorry I'm late," he called. "Had to turn in an assignment for one of my classes."

Stephen looked up from where he was crouching on the floor as he closed another lockbox. "Where are the girls?"

"Right behind me. Got the photos?"

"Didn't get to download them off my camera yet."

"Why not?"

"Because the last time I checked, you still had it."

"Oh, yeah." Peter reached into a jacket pocket. "Here you are, starving artist Stevie."

"_Stephen_," Stephen corrected, snatching the camera away. "With a 'ph', not a 'v'. I hate shortened names."

Peter laughed heartily. "What, did you get called 'Stupid Stevie' as a kid or something?"

Stephen looked annoyed. "No comment, Puny Parker."

The sobriquet barely fazed Peter. "Hey, I have a whole encyclopedia of mocking names I've been called. Which, for what it's worth, is a big reason I like being under the mask. I get to do the name-calling and nobody messes with me…much, anyway." He looked over Stephen's threadbare clothes, a tattered flannel shirt and khakis with worn knees and cuffs. "You do kind of look like a bad movie version of a 'starving artist', though."

"Maybe I should borrow your clothes," Stephen noted, nodding at Peter's thermal shirt and torn pants. "Aren't you supposed to have money as part of this little ruse?"

"You said not to bring any of my own clothes," Peter replied. "Did you pack my spare suit?"

"It's upstairs in the usual costume storage closet, with a suitcase full of new Brooks Brothers' suits and ties. So, I'll pass as a starving artistic photographer?"

"For now. But real photographers don't use digicams."

"They do if they're too poor for a top-of-the-line film camera," Stephen pointed out. "Which, as I recall, you already own, so why have you been borrowing my digital?"

"No time to develop film on Brackett after the most recent surveillance runs. Besides, you never use it."

"Which is why you engraved your name on it, right?"

"Hey, don't blame me, that was MJ's doing. Something about wanting to make sure all my property was properly marked for insurance purposes. "

Stephen noticed the ID sticker he'd put on the camera when he'd first bought it. "What, she didn't notice the 'Return to Cranston Manor' sticker already on it?" He shook his head. "Good thing my fake ID says I'm Peter this time and you're Stephen." He dropped onto the sofa, then fired up his laptop and plugged the digital camera into the USB port.

"If I'm Stephen, I want his money." Peter teased.

"Dream on, starving grad student." Stephen started printing out pictures from the camera.

The phone rang.

"Ignore it," Stephen said, checking the pictures carefully.

"Gladly," Peter said, taking a seat on the wall.

The ringing stopped.

A moment later, Andrew entered the room. "Sir, the Marpa Tulku is on line one and says he needs to speak to you urgently."

Stephen gave Peter a look, then looked over at Andrew. "Didn't I give you the month off?"

"You did, sir," Andrew replied, producing a note from his pocket. "And the rest of the staff as well. The exact text of your memo was, 'Andrew: Take the month off and relax. I'll be in touch…S'. But since you are still here, I felt it best if I stayed on the job until you left."

Stephen decided it wasn't worth arguing with his majordomo. Chances were high he'd lose the argument anyway. "Well, as long as you're still here, can you check on our plane tickets?"

Andrew gave a nod and left the room.

Stephen flipped open the carved box that concealed the telephone and put the line on speaker. "Yes, Tulku?"

"Stephen," the young monk's voice replied. "I see from today's issue of the _Classic_ that you are tracking a man named Paul Brackett. Why?"

"Because he's a blackmailing extortionist and identity thief," Stephen replied.

"This is not a good idea," the Tulku pronounced.

Stephen didn't want to hear it. "In our investigation, we've found ample evidence of him wholesale adopting some identities of wealthy socialites and extorting money from the families of others whose identities he's stolen. Names, addresses, Swiss account numbers, safe combos…you name it, he's probably managed to get it. He's worked his way from the West Coast to the East Coast, and we've gotten word that one of his stolen identities has purchased tickets to Rome. We need to beat him there. The FBI's after him but can't stay ahead of him because of his constant name changing. That's where we come in. We're going to bait him into a trap to take advantage of a lonely socialite in her first trip overseas, and when he gets to her, we'll be able to swoop in."

"By 'we', I take it you mean yourself, Peter, and the girls?"

"As much as I'd rather it mean 'me, myself, and I', I need some outside assistance, so, yes, it's Peter and the girls."

"This is a bad idea, Stephen. Very bad. Brackett is not blackmailing people to steal their identities."

Peter frowned. "Yeah, that's the only part we're missing--how he manages to so cleanly steal these people's identities that they won't go to the police themselves."

"Brackett is a mind eraser."

Peter looked confused. "A what now?"

Now it was Stephen's turn to frown. "A projector who can cut off connections to selective memories. It's my little trick for making people forget they've ever seen me. Tulku, do you mean Brackett is a projective telepath?"

"Yes. He was studying at one of my student's temples in Oregon when his skills emerged. According to the temple master, he memory-wiped two teachers and four guards in order to make his escape. He has a natural ability to manipulate memories, especially familiarity, and can break those memory links easily. Once those are broken, he can easily take over a person's life because that person will have no memory of living that life." The Tulku paused. "And now that he knows you are onto him, he will come after you. I believe he may have extra incentive, as one of the guards he wiped was the youngest of the students brought to America when your grandfather rescued me all those years ago. Therefore…"

"…he more than likely knows who Lamont Cranston is, and what powers he possessed," Stephen remarked. "And it's not exactly a state secret that _Classic_ reporter Stephen Cranston is the grandson of the billionaire pillar of society."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Tulku, have you ever considered having your disciples install iron bars around their temples?"

"I am on my way to Manhattan," The Tulku responded, ignoring the disrespectful tone. "I will deal with him if he is still in town when I arrive. In the meantime, be careful and guard your thoughts at all times."

"Will do," Stephen promised, then hung up the phone.

Andrew came back in and handed him an envelope. "Your tickets, sir--Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cranston, at your request."

"Where's mine?" Peter asked.

"Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Parker's tickets are waiting at the airport." He handed Peter a code number. "This way they all can't be traced back to a single purchase source."

"Good," Stephen responded, closing his laptop. He reached behind him to unplug the power cord, wincing as he did.

"You O.K.?" Peter asked.

"Old scar. Cuts across the nerves in the backs. Hurts sometimes."

Peter scoffed. "What, did you mess up a tumo or something?"

Stephen rolled his eyes. That was easier than explaining that at some point during the battle a few weeks ago between Lizard and Spider--or, rather, mutated Curt Connors and mutated Peter Parker--Stephen had somehow ended up with two cracked vertebrae in his mid-back, and the abbreviated tumo he'd done to get himself up and running the next day didn't quite get the vertebral alignment correct. Of course, the main reason he didn't give such an explanation was that he'd then have to explain why he hadn't done something about it, which he _had_, going to a trauma surgeon who was one of his agents to get an actual diagnosis for why the pain in his back hadn't eased. Unfortunately, the answer he'd received was that he needed back surgery to fix the damage and got a boatload of painkillers to tide him over until the thing could be scheduled, and there was no way to explain to Peter or anyone else why the Master of Darkness who was just two generations descended from a savage opium-addicted warlord had half a dozen narcotic prescriptions in his medicine cabinet. So, rather than even try an explanation, he left it at that simple eye-roll and handed the photos to Andrew. "Put these in my suitcase, please."

Sarah and MJ came in as Andrew was leaving, oblivious to Stephen's pain or Peter's sarcasm. "We ready?" Sarah asked by way of greeting.

Stephen slipped his laptop inside a file drawer from the room's massive mahogany desk, then pulled out a lockbox from the same drawer. "O.K., do it."

Everyone pulled out their wallets, business cards, and various pieces of identification, tossing them in the box.

Stephen shut it firmly, locked it, put the box back in the drawer and slid the key toward the back of the drawer.

"Cell phone," Peter reminded him, tapping the side of his head to indicate where Stephen had forgotten to check for identifying marks.

Stephen grumbled, then took the earpiece out of his ear and shut it off, opened the drawer and tossed it and the cell phone into it, then closed and locked the drawer and put the drawer key under a vase on a pedestal.

"You'll remember where that is, right?" Sarah remarked.

Stephen merely rolled his eyes. "Now then, Mrs. Sarah Cranston, you need some jewelry and some expensive clothing. You're going to be the bait for Brackett, so we've got to make you rich." He opened the top drawer, and pulled out a jewelry case with an obscenely expensive pearl necklace, a set of matching earrings, and a ring with a huge ruby mounted in its center.

Sarah couldn't help but lick her lips at the sight, especially when Stephen added a 40's style hatbox that had been stashed under the desk to the haul.

MJ batted Stephen's arm as Sarah was admiring the mink stole and fur-trimmed hat inside the box. "Why the Hell can't I be bait?" she complained.

"You hate being bait," Peter reminded her.

"Well, yeah, but getting to wear _that_ would almost make it worthwhile," she replied.

Peter rolled his eyes. "I'll remember that next time a supervillain comes near."

Scene Break

Across the street, sitting in a nondescript sedan and staring distantly at the house, Paul Brackett was plotting his next identity theft.

The knowledge that the Turtle Bay manor house was owned by the grandson of Marpa Tulku's obviously-wealthy benefactor might have been reason enough for Paul Brackett to target it; after all, who wouldn't want control of the Cranston fortune, with a public figure of over 10 billion and a private figure that was at least 3 to 5 times that, all of it belonging to a man just under the age of 30 with no legal heirs? But after finding out that said grandson was Stephen Cranston--the investigative journalist who'd been on his trail for almost two weeks now, who was always just a couple of logical steps behind him as Brackett made his way eastward--there was an even more urgent reason to target him. Lamont Cranston was revered as the most powerful projective telepath to ever train under Marpa Tulku, and anybody being labeled as better than Paul Brackett was at _anything_ didn't stay unchallenged for long. The knowledge that the younger Cranston was now wearing the hat and cloak of The Shadow, the so-called Master of Darkness whose very name made junior initiates tremble, was just like dangling a steak in front of a tiger as far as Brackett was concerned. So Brackett knew he was taking on a well-trained projector who knew Brackett's own skills and had probably been working on ways to outdo him. Fine. He could handle that. It would take a little extra work, but eventually Cranston would be just another in a long line of people surrendering their entire life history to him, and that would be that.

But then he'd seen Cranston's photographer, Peter Parker, arrive. Putting together knowledge that Stephen Cranston was the latest incarnation of The Shadow with the knowledge that, until recently, Stephen Cranston and Peter Parker were joined at the hip during their investigations into crimes and schemes that eventually got thwarted by The Shadow and Spiderman, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Peter Parker was probably Spiderman. Brackett could out-think practically anyone, but messing with a superhero with Spiderman's combined skill set? Not a good idea. Spiderman's record vs. so-called "supervillains" was pretty formidable. Still, though, two minds weren't too much to handle…

And then two more people arrived, a pair of attractive women. The redhead he recognized as a model who did lots of perfume advertising--her "Emma Rose Parfums" billboards were still up in places around the city. The other one was a reporter, too--he'd seen pictures of her on the website of the New York _Post_ and heard rumors she'd been out on the town with Cranston himself--but was also a clairvoyant. O.K., so now he was facing four minds, two of them psychic, plus a third belonging to a guy Brackett wouldn't normally mess with on a bet. This was not evolving well.

And then it got worse when Brackett felt a fifth mind enter the same room. He could have sworn the Cranston Manor servant he'd mind-tapped for the layout of the place told him that the staff was all on a one-month extended absence, but since he hadn't seen anybody else enter, the fifth was likely a staff member, somebody who worked in the manor but hadn't gotten the "Take a month off" memo. Joy. Rapture. It would be hard enough to mind-erase one projective telepath, but Brackett could handle that. A strongman with a built-in danger sense? O.K., still feasible. A clairvoyant as well? Now that was pushing it. And two more regular folks who'd have to be dealt with…Brackett could already feel the headache coming on.

Still, though, he had to buy himself some more time to escape to Europe. Erasing five minds was going to take some real effort, so it was better he started now so that he could both recover his own strength and do additional mind-wiping if necessary. The cleanup team he'd bought and paid for at a rather exorbitant price would be here in an hour, and his own flight was leaving at midnight. So, if he was going to do this, he had to do it _now_.

Scene Break

"Fake ID's are all upstairs," Stephen said he picked up the digital camera and shoved it in his pocket. "I've packed my clothes, left Peter some stuff in the clothing suite down the hall, and there's clothes…in another bedroom…uh, that, uh, you girls could borrow…" He looked around the room, trying to fight off a brain-fogging headache.

Sarah, who'd been admiring her new jewelry and mink stole, felt her brain becoming fogged as well. Her vision blurred as her eyelids felt heavy.

Peter felt a momentary tingle of his spider-sense, and then he too was brain-fogged. "What the…," he began, but started sliding off the wall before he could finish the thought.

Andrew never had a chance; he went from walking in the doorway of the parlor to lying face-down on the floor in one painful-looking pratfall.

Sarah's knees buckled.

Peter, even in his disoriented state, reached out to catch her.

Moments later, they were both passed out in a heap on the floor.

MJ went from looking confused to completely unconscious in mere seconds.

Stephen caught her as she fell, then felt his own legs turn to water.

The last thing he remembered was complete and total horror that this was likely some kind of psychic attack before he collapsed onto the sofa with MJ in his arms.

Scene Break

Brackett kept spinning the mind-erasing signal across the street until he felt the last bit of psychic resistance--likely Stephen Cranston's psyche fighting back instinctively--fade away.

Then it was time for Brackett himself to pass out from exhaustion, and he slumped across his steering wheel.

Scene Break

The first to come around was the badly-dressed starving artist cliché, who woke up groggy and feeling very warm and somewhat confined. There was a weight on top of him, something he was holding onto at least partially. It was warm, soft, comforting. As he tried to come completely awake, he shifted the weight in his arms…

…and felt it breathing.

Eyes snapping open, he focused on the face of a beautiful redhead curled up on his lap.

The redhead yawned and smiled sleepily at him. Then her face froze.

It suddenly occurred to both of them that neither knew who the other was.

In a second, they were both on their feet, she stumbling away from him and he backing away from her, his mind racing past confusion into full-blown panic. "Who are you?" he asked, trying not to sound as panicked as he felt. Something inside his brain was urging him to calm him down, and something else was just as urgently reminding him that he was in the middle of an unfamiliar room with a woman in his arms and he didn't know who she was.

Then something else in his brain reminded him that he didn't know who _he_ was, either.

A groan came from the other side of the room, and both of them spun to see an older gentleman in an expensive suit rise to his feet. "Good Lord…," the man began in a sleepy-sounding English accent, and then he came awake in a panic when he realized that he had no idea where he was or even _who_ he was.

The redhead moved toward him. "Hey…are you all right?" she asked, hoping somebody in here was less afraid than she was about not knowing what the Hell was going on.

The British man backed against the doorframe and looked terrified.

Behind the couch, a brunette was stirring, then sitting up. Her own moment of confusion passed as she tried to take inventory of herself and of her surroundings. _Expensive jewels…mink stole…O.K., I think I belong in this room at least._ She pinched the bridge of her nose and crawled up onto the couch. "Somebody get me a cup of coffee," she complained.

The starving artist looked even more confused. "What the…who are _you_?"

The brunette started to respond, then realized she didn't really know. Her answer was defensive. "You first," she snapped back. "Who the Hell are _you_?"

The redhead turned around from freaking out the British gentleman and held up her hands reassuringly. "It's O.K.," she urged. "I think we're all a little confused right now."

Everybody took a deep breath and started to try to figure the situation out…

…only to be freaked out once more when a young man with lean limbs and exceptionally broad-muscled shoulders suddenly emerged from behind the sofa as well. "Somebody get the license plate of that truck…," he began, then stopped and leapt to his feet, staring at everyone.

For a long moment, all five sets of eyes were darting around the room, gazing suspiciously at the others.

Rich-looking brunette Sarah spoke first. "All right. Does anybody know who they are?"

Nobody responded.

Sarah looked annoyed. "Does anybody know who I am?"

Nobody responded.

Sarah was now past annoyed. "Does anybody have the power of speech?"

Everybody started speaking over each other frantically.

Sarah finally put her fingers in her mouth and gave a shrill whistle.

The room fell silent once more.

Redheaded MJ turned to Starving Artist Stephen. "You don't remember who I am?"

Stephen shook his head.

MJ was still trying to put all of this together. "Are you sure? I mean, we _were_ rather…um, close when we woke up…"

Stephen felt himself blushing and turned away, shaking his head.

"Does anyone know _where_ we are?" British gentleman Andrew asked. "Or how we all got here?"

Everyone glanced around the very expensive room.

Sarah looked at her jewelry. "Maybe I'm the lady of the house and you're all my servants."

Lean and muscular Peter looked around as well. "Probably takes all of us just to keep up with this house."

Sarah nodded. "O.K., let's put a hold on 'where' for now, since we're clearly in some kind of manor house that may or may not be mine. None of us know _who_ we are. Why is that?"

Peter looked around. "No sign of drugs." He sniffed himself. "I don't smell like liquor."

Stephen wrapped his arms around himself. "Don't panic," he whispered to himself, trying to regain some control over himself.

MJ gave him a hug reassuringly.

Sarah just looked disdainfully at him. "Get hold of yourself."

Peter snapped his fingers. "Driver's licenses."

Everyone understood at once and started searching their pockets. It wasn't a very long search.

"No wallets!" Stephen said, now completely and totally unnerved. "None of us have ID!"

"Relax!" Sarah shouted at him. "O.K., check for less obvious things. Monograms. Nametags inside clothing. Engravings."

"Magazines?" MJ said aloud.

Everyone looked over at MJ, who had retrieved a magazine from the coffee table. She turned its back cover to face the others. "Sure looks like me."

Peter couldn't help but think his assent to her remark. Wow, she was gorgeous. And with his luck, she was taken. All the good ones always were.

MJ, oblivious to the attention, checked the credits on the Emma Rose Cosmetics ad. "'Mary Jane Watson is wearing Emma Rose Moist-Lip Color in American Beauty'," she read off the tiny print near the spine. "Mary Jane Watson. That's me. O.K., one name down, four to go."

Peter had noticed something. "You and I have matching rings," he said, comparing Sarah's fire opal ring to his own.

"We're all wearing matching rings," Stephen noted, quickly doing a visual inventory of the room, feeling himself calm down slightly for some unknown reason.

"So is this a cult?" MJ wondered aloud.

"Maybe we all went to the same college," Peter guessed.

Stephen returned to searching his pockets and found something in his jacket pocket. "A camera," he noted, pulling it out to look it over. "You're a model," he noted to MJ. "Maybe I'm your photographer?"

Sarah just looked disdainfully at him again. "You certainly look the part."

Stephen looked himself over. He _was_ dressed like a poor artist cliché, sure enough. "Maybe," he admitted. Then he found an engraving on the camera." "'Peter'," he read. "My name is Peter. O.K. Two down, three to go."

"Can I see that…Peter?" MJ asked, reaching for the camera.

Stephen handed it to her.

MJ found a label partially hidden by a waterproof case. "'If Found, Please Return To Cranston Manor'." She looked around. "Is this Cranston Manor, by chance?"

Peter looked around. "Sure looks like a manor." He peered out the window. "There's a big 'C' in the wrought iron work on the gates."

Stephen nodded, and took the camera back. "Peter…Cranston, maybe?"

"You're not rich enough to live here," Sarah scoffed.

"Or maybe I just choose not to dress like I do," Stephen retorted.

Andrew found a note in his pocket. "My name is Andrew," he said aloud. "And one of you has a first name that starts with a 'S'." He looked over the stationery his note had been written upon. "It's engraved. The monogram is S-A-C."

"So someone here is S. Cranston," MJ deduced.

"Or borrowed their stationery," Sarah reminded them as she checked engravings inside her rings, continuing to come up blank. Then she turned her wristwatch over. "'To Sarah'," she read. "'From a grateful guardian--Stephen.'"

"What's a grateful guardian?" Peter asked.

"Probably my bodyguard," Sarah responded, annoyed at the question. "Which, don't take this the wrong way, but you're awfully short to be a bodyguard."

Peter shrugged. "Maybe, but I'm the only one with no name so far. So, for right now, I'll be Stephen." He nodded. "Steve. Call me Steve."

"S. Cranston is my boss," Andrew said, reading his note again.

Everyone turned to him. "I am?" Sarah asked.

"'Andrew: Take the month off and relax. I'll be in touch…S'." Andrew looked up. "So S. Cranston…"

"….or whoever's using their stationery," MJ interrupted.

"…has me in their employ," Andrew finished, determined not to let a contradictory opinion disrupt his train of thought.

"So I'm the 'S. Cranston' who wrote the note?" Sarah asked.

"Maybe," Andrew observed. "You _are_ Sarah, and this _does_ appear to be a manor house."

"Why not me?" Peter replied, a little insulted at the way he was being disregarded by everyone here. "My name starts with 'S' too."

"If you _are_ my bodyguard," Sarah remarked, "you're likely not 'Steve Cranston'." She turned back to Andrew. "So, you're…what? My butler? My concierge? My divorce lawyer?"

"Maybe I'm your husband," Andrew retorted.

"Oh, please," Sarah said with an eyeroll. "You're old enough to be my father. I sincerely doubt I'm some kind of trophy wife."

Stephen looked over the woman who called herself "Sarah" and the fact that she was dripping with gemstones and furs. She looked like some pulp fiction incarnation of a rich heiress…or, as she'd denied, a trophy wife. "I'd like to thank the academy," he muttered a little louder than he'd intended.

Peter couldn't help laughing.

Sarah looked annoyed. "Can it, comic boy," she said to Peter, then looked to Stephen. "So, you don't think I'm really the lady of the house?"

"Why are we assuming that everything we see here is real?" Stephen replied, finally voicing some of the thoughts spinning through his brain in ways he neither understood nor could stop even if he wanted to. "None of us know who we really are; we're making assumptions about identities based on markers we find, and I'm not comfortable with that. That way lies madness."

"Well, aren't you the smart one?" Peter scoffed.

"Stop it!" MJ shouted, annoyed with the game of one-upmanship that had begun. "Look, it may be crazy, but if we give ourselves names, it at least gives us a starting place to work from. It's also better than calling out, 'Hey, red' or 'Hey, British guy' to get each other's attention. Let's accept the names we have right now and change them if we find out something different."

Five sets of eyes once more regarded each other suspiciously, but gradually all of them nodded their agreement with MJ's plan.

Sarah rubbed her temples, then rubbed her eyes, trying to clear a lingering blurriness at the edge of her visual field that was popping up from time to time. "Where do you suppose the aspirin is in a place this size?"

Andrew smiled. "Probably in at least one of the bathrooms." Then he sighed. "And if I am your 'butler' or 'concierge', maybe I can find them." He started to walk away.

"Wait," Stephen said, feeling uncomfortable but not sure why.

If Stephen had known that he could read minds, he'd have found out he'd beaten Peter to the same cautionary word by a mere fraction of a second. Peter was definitely feeling uncomfortable about this whole thing, to the point where it felt like there was a bag of marbles rattling in the back of his skull. He rubbed his neck, trying to ease a tingling sensation that accompanied the odd feeling.

"Headache, too?" Sarah noticed, realizing that something wasn't quite right here.

"He's not the only one," Stephen muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. Something was pressing right behind his eyes, and they felt as if they were about to pop out any second. And his back hurt, too, as if he'd been asleep in an awkward position…which, he had to remind himself, he actually had.

"Maybe we need to team up as we split up," MJ remarked. "Make sure nobody gets left alone anywhere."

"O.K.," Stephen replied. "Since this place may or may not be Cranston Manor, and Sarah over there may or may not be the 'S. Cranston' in Andrew's note, and Stephen over there…"

"Steve," Peter interrupted.

"Whatever," Stephen responded. "I hate short names. Anyway, since _Steve_ over there may or may not be Sarah's bodyguard and Andrew may or may not be some kind of house servant or otherwise in S. Cranston's employ, maybe the three of you should form a team of exploration together. I'm going to stick around here and try to find some more evidence as to what happened here…and who we _really_ are."

The three Stephen had grouped together looked at him oddly, but without realizing it, they all simultaneously decided it wasn't worth another argument. Andrew led the way out of the room, with Sarah right behind him and Peter's eyes looking everywhere as he brought up the rear.

"Why'd you send then away?" MJ asked.

Stephen nearly jumped through the roof; he'd forgotten MJ was still there.

"You're really jumpy," MJ noted.

"I hate not being in control of things," Stephen muttered. Then he stopped. "Why do I know that?"

MJ looked excited that at least somebody's memory was starting to clear. "Maybe that's just part of your personality. After all, we don't know where we are or who we are, but who we are is so much more than just a name."

"True enough," Stephen remarked.

"Maybe I'll remember something soon," MJ sighed.

Stephen turned and held a finger to her lips to shush her, then quietly crossed the room and slid the hidden pocket doors out of their concealment inside the walls, locking them into position.

MJ was a bit unnerved about the doors closing and locking. "Wow. I've heard of security and secrecy before, but this is a little ridiculous. Why'd you do that?

"First off, because when I was searching my pockets, I found _this_." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a printed receipt for a pair of one-way plane tickets due to depart in a matter of hours. The names on the receipt were "Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cranston". "Two one-way tickets to Rome, leaving tonight."

MJ looked confused. "I don't follow."

"I think my real name _is_ Peter Cranston, which makes me wonder who 'Mrs. Cranston' actually is."

"You don't think you're married to Sarah?"

"That's the other thing. Take a look around the room. Really look at it. What's the first thing you notice?"

MJ looked around, not sure she was following the logic, such as it was, that was being presented to her. "Um…it's big."

"And?"

"And it's full of antiques."

"And?"

That was when MJ noticed something odd. "And there are lots of portraits of rich-looking men hanging up in here."

Stephen crossed the room and pointed to a particularly prominent picture of Lamont Cranston. "Rich-looking men with really pronounced features. Coal black hair, blue-green eyes, high Irish cheekbones, strong chin." Stephen pointed around the room at pictures of men he couldn't identify, men who all looked more or less alike, men who were previous versions of the master of Cranston Manor. "Him…him…him…him…they've all got roughly the same look." He then looked in the mirror over the fireplace. "Put a frame on this reflection and it would fit right in."

"O.K., so I get that you're a Cranston, but we'd already guessed that," MJ reminded him. "What's with the need to point out the resemblance?"

"Because the only way Sarah is a Cranston is if she married one." He looked around the room. "There are no solo portraits of women. I see wedding pictures on the walls, but they're all old…and they're all portraits of women marrying other Cranston men. Not a one of them look alike, and none of them look even remotely related to any of the men." He found one portrait that looked more recent than the others. " That's the most recent one, and even that one is over thirty years old, judging by the fading and oxidation of the paper. And this guy…" He pointed at Victor's visage in the picture. "…this guy, who _isn't_ the groom in this picture, is the same as _that_ guy." He pointed to a more formal portrait of Victor on another wall.

MJ looked impressed. "You've got quite the eye for detail. No wonder you're a photographer."

Stephen looked momentarily reassured by that thought, then the nagging suspicions returned. "If Sarah is my wife, why are there no wedding pictures?"

"Well, there's not a solo portrait of _you_, either," MJ pointed out.

"You're right. There isn't." He pointed to a picture on the desk. "But _that_ is me."

MJ looked at the photo of an older man with white hair seated in a beautiful leather armchair, with a man she recognized as the younger version of the man she knew as Peter standing behind him. "Sure looks like it," she admitted.

"Just from looking around the room, I can see things are in transition in here," he remarked. "There are empty spaces on the wall, some pictures look like they've been moved recently, there are modern conveniences kind of wedged into open spaces inside this museum-like room. So the fact that there aren't a lot of solo pictures of me on the walls isn't all that unusual--it could be that I've only recently moved in or taken over the stewardship of the house. But there _are_ pictures of me in here." He pointed around the room. "The young couple holding a baby? That's the couple in that wedding picture over here. And that baby is probably me." He made another gesture. "That's a college graduation photo. Young me, older guy with me."

"So, what happened to the couple with the baby?" MJ wondered.

"I wish I could remember," Stephen remarked. "But the fact that they don't appear at all in pictures of me as I age probably means they're no longer…involved with me."

"They're dead," MJ said, a nagging memory in her head about Peter always using euphemisms and misdirected language.

"Probably," Stephen said. "But that doesn't change the basic scenario at work in this situation." He turned to MJ. "I belong here," Stephen pronounced. "But…does _she_?"

Scene Break

Finding _a_ bathroom hadn't been a problem. There were two on the bottom floor alone. But both were clearly for visitors only, and there weren't any identifying clues in any of them…nor any aspirin. Finally, the three searchers made it to the top floor and found the master bedroom suite. "About time," Sarah grumbled. "If this _is_ my manor house, I'm trading it in for a condo."

Peter looked at the bed. "Suitcases. Somebody's going on a trip."

Andrew made his way to the bathroom. "Monogrammed towels. This one's definitely a personal bath."

Sarah joined him. "S-A-C. That's the second time we've found that monogram." She looked around. "Except…there's absolutely nothing feminine about this room whatsoever." She pointed to the vanity. "No makeup, no women's shampoo, no perfume…this is a man's bathroom."

"Maybe this is _my_ room," Andrew observed. "We don't know my last name, and I could be using my middle name instead of my first name. And those suitcases on the bed could be mine as well, since I've apparently been given a month off."

"So you wrote yourself a time-off note on your own stationery?" Peter wisecracked. "I want _that_ kind of boss."

"Maybe I _am_ that kind of boss," Sarah grumbled, not appreciating that there seemed to be so much suspicion around her.

Peter opened the medicine chest. "Wow."

"Found any aspirin?" Sarah asked.

"Well, yeah." He reached into the cabinet and pulled out the bottle.

"Good. Give me some." She reached for the disposable cups and got herself a bit of water.

"Sure you don't want something stronger?" Peter asked, handing her the pills.

"What have I got that's stronger?" Sarah asked, downing the pills.

"A lot." Peter pulled out a half-dozen brown pharmaceutical bottles. "Morphine…two different strengths, in fact…Oxycodone…Hydrocodone…two different strengths of that, too…the lightest pain killer in here is Tylenol #3, otherwise known as Tylenol with Codeine. Six prescriptions for opiate narcotics, three of them Class 2-strength. All filled in the last few months. The two morphine scripts were filled this month, in fact. And all of them are made out to 'S.A. Cranston'."

Sarah choked on the water she was using to chase down the pills. "I'm a junkie?"

"Maybe you just have some chronic pain condition," Andrew guessed.

"Or maybe you need these for the same reason you need a bodyguard," Peter observed. "Do you remember anything about an attack, or an accident, or…well, anything that might have caused enough injury to need this level of medicine?"

Now Sarah was shaking for the first time since they'd come out of the initial confusion. "I don't know. I don't know." She grabbed the bottles of morphine and stared at them. "Maybe I don't know because I'm high on this stuff all the time?"

"If I may…," Andrew said, trying to think through this admittedly troubling find. "It's not unusual for patients with high-profile identities to have prescriptions written to either a pseudonym or to a designated representative for the patient. If you're correct in this observation that this is a man's bathroom, those medicines might be prescribed for this room's normal resident and merely written for your name."

"But then we're back to why does the room have towels with my name on them but nothing else that's mine?" She left the bathroom in frustration, trying not to show the fear that was rapidly building behind her defensive front.

"Hey," Peter said, coming out to join her. "Take it easy. I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation for all of this." He shrugged. "Not that I've figured it out yet, but there _does_ have to be one. We'll figure it out eventually."

Sarah threw the fur-trimmed chapeau and mink stole aside angrily and stared out the window, almost begging it to unveil itself as a giant projection screen and answer their questions.

Instead, a flash of the man she knew as "Peter" and the redhead who was calling herself "Mary Jane" appeared before her eyes, looking awfully close as they continued searching the parlor. "Why are Peter and Mary Jane still downstairs searching the same room…" She paused. "…with locked parlor doors?"

Peter looked at her oddly. "How do you know they locked the doors?"

Sarah looked unnerved. "I don't know how I know. I just do." She was shaking. "No, that's a lie. I know because…oh, God, this is the stupidest thing _ever_…I saw it." Her chin quivered as if she was trying to hold back on completely losing what was left of her calm. "I know, that's crazy talk, even _I_ think that's crazy, but…I swear I saw it."

Peter was trying very hard not to look at her as if she were crazy, even though he was now beginning to question everybody's sanity. "The whole world's crazy except me and thee…and sometimes I wonder about thee."

Sarah closed her eyes, trying to hold back the tears. "Oh, my God...Steve, what am I? Some kind of freak? Some kind of junkie? Some kind of junkie freak? Some kind of freaky junkie?"

Peter gave a laugh as he put his arm around her reassuringly. "Or maybe you're just a little more scared than you like people to think."

Sarah barely nodded, as if she were ashamed of admitting anything to anybody.

Peter's reassuring arm drape turned into a more familiar shoulder-hug. "Relax. Maybe Peter was right. Maybe we don't really know anything yet."

Sarah was shaking. "I… I don't know what to do now…"

"It's O.K. We'll figure it out," Peter promised. "Here…put your drugs in your pocket just in case you need them later."

"In case I end up in enough pain to need big doses of morphine?"" she laughed uneasily as she followed her bodyguard's instructions.

Peter shook his head. "If that happens, I'll take on whatever's generating that kind of pain. You won't get hurt. I won't let you."

Sarah smiled at him. "You promise?"

"Promise," Peter said in his most earnest Boy Scout voice. "Come on. Let's go downstairs and see what Peter and MJ are doing behind closed doors."

"Not sure I want to know that," Sarah grumbled, then gestured with her head toward the doorway.

Peter followed Sarah out the door, and this time Andrew brought up the rear.

Scene Break

A few minutes later, all five of them were studying the pictures in the parlor that Stephen had first noticed. "This is just amazing," Peter said, his voice barely above a whisper. "You're right, Peter; stick a gold frame in front of your face and you'd fit right in with this group. Talk about a family resemblance…"

Sarah looked even more confused than ever. "I don't understand. My monogram's on towels and pillowcases and stationery, and yet there's not _one_ picture of me in this place?"

"Maybe your husband's dead," MJ guessed.

"Doubt it," Stephen replied. "Not unless she was married to this guy." He pointed to a portrait of Victor. "This picture is the only one of all these older men that was done in the last ten years, and there's not a soul in these pictures younger than his generation…except for ones obviously taken of me."

"You're the one who called me a 'trophy wife'," Sarah reminded him.

"Even trophy wives usually get shown off in portraits. That's what makes all of this so odd."

Andrew looked around the room. "I'm not in any of these photos, either."

"I'm not, either," Peter remarked.

"Well, if you _are_ house servants or staff, that wouldn't be unusual," Stephen remarked. "O.K., so it's pretty obvious that _I'm_ a Cranston. Like Steve said, the resemblance is hard to deny. So the question becomes, Sarah, is your last name really 'Cranston'?"

"Maybe the two of you are recently married?" Peter guessed.

"Or about to get divorced," Sarah said in a tone of frustration.

"Paranoia is so unbecoming," Stephen answered the accusation.

"Oh, come on, Peter. You woke up with your bimbo in your arms…"

"Hey!" MJ objected.

"…while I'm probably wearing every piece of expensive clothing and jewelry I can carry out of here," Sarah continued. "No wonder I need a bodyguard."

"All right!" MJ said in frustration. "Time out, everybody! Look, the last hour or so's been pretty insane for all of us. Again, let's just kind of accept things as they are for right now. Maybe whatever this…_thing_ that happened to us is only temporary, at which point I think we'll all feel really stupid about attacking each other personally or character-wise. Let's concentrate for right now on getting through the night without either killing or being killed by one another. Meanwhile, I'm starving and I'm going to get something to eat. Anybody want to join me?"

"I will," Stephen remarked. "Still not wild about anybody being alone right now while none of us understand what's really going on…"

Sarah watched her maybe-husband hurry after the redhead. "Hm-m. I think I'll see if I can find out who that girl _really_ is. There must be something around here that would give us a clue why she's here if she was invited in."

Peter was only a step behind her. "I'll go with you."

Scene Break

Brackett felt consciousness returning to his way-overworked mind. He checked his watch and gave a groan at the time, then started his car and drove off to pick up the last traces of his life in Manhattan, a life he'd no longer need once he stole whatever he needed from Stephen Cranston.

His cell phone rang. He took a second to recognize the number as the hired help he'd been employing lately. "Yeah? Of course it's done. Go now. Cut the phones. Kill everyone in the house. Then call me afterward so we can finish this."

Scene Break

MJ found the kitchen relatively easily. Once she'd seen the dining room--really a small banquet hall--she took a guess as to which door held the food, and found a large kitchen with expensive food preparation equipment. "Talk about overkill," she remarked.

Stephen wasn't listening as he followed her into the kitchen. "I am _not_ married to that…that…" He was so frustrated by the fact that he couldn't even remember being married, much less why he would marry such an obvious social climber, that he couldn't figure out how to end his rant as he stomped around the kitchen. "I'm not married to _her_."

"The evidence says you are," MJ reminded him. She caught his arm, made him stop, and made him look at her. "Peter, if you married her, you must love her, you just don't remember."

"If I love her so much, why were you the one waking up on my lap?" Stephen demanded.

MJ half smiled, half gulped at that. "I… I don't know."

"Yeah. Exactly." Stephen frowned. "And I don't like that bodyguard of hers always within reach. Giving her expensive wristwatches too. I don't like it."

"What, Steve? He looks like the most earnest Boy Scout ever."

"See, he's got you fooled. I'm not fooled. There's something about him that isn't so Boy-Scout innocent. I can see it in his eyes."

"You know, about an hour ago, none of us knew anyone here."

"That's right. And who was it who said we shouldn't necessarily take things at face value?"

MJ was trying not to agree with Stephen. His paranoia was a bit much, but there was something else there that was somewhat unnerving. For a guy who'd come out of his unconsciousness in such utter panic, the rate at which he was calming down and making more rational deductions was almost chilling. No, it _was_ chilling, no 'almost' about it. That said, it was definitely a seductive kind of chilling, and she couldn't take her eyes off him as he kept going with this new idea.

"And besides, I found _this_ in her pocket," Stephen continued, flashing one of the morphine bottles.

MJ took the bottle. "Wow. 45 milligrams at one shot. That's a _lot_ of pain meds for a woman so small." She looked at Stephen oddly. "You picked her pocket?"

Stephen was caught off-guard. "Yeah. I did. No idea how I knew to do that."

"Maybe neither you nor Steve are complete Boy Scouts," MJ teased.

Stephen rolled his eyes. "Those are prescribed to her. Is she some kind of junkie? Is _that_ why our marriage is on the rocks?"

MJ handed Stephen the pills. "Sure looks that way. But again, let's not take everything at face value. Let's find some food and see if we can figure things out over dinner." She started searching the pantry, giving a frown as she did.

"Empty?" Stephen guessed.

"Hardly," MJ responded. "I know I said not to take everything at face value, but it looks like you guys don't eat a lot of pre-cooked meals. There's a lot of pantry staples here, but nothing like boxed mac-and-cheese or jars of pasta sauce."

"Well, then, at least one of us probably knows how to cook, then." Stephen opened cupboards until he found plates and glasses in one. He was just reaching into the cabinets when he felt his back seize. "Ow!" he shouted, grabbing his lower mid-back with one hand and supporting himself on the counter with the other hand.

"Are you O.K.?" MJ asked, rushing over to him.

Stephen wasn't sure. It felt like a weird combination of sensations…like a pointy bone digging into the muscles of his back, which were tightening up and squeezing his spine as hard as they could. It hurt like Hell…

…and that was when it hit him. Adding this pain to the annoying headache he hadn't been able to shake, and the whole thing hurt bad enough to need the painkillers that were prescribed to his wife. He took the bottle out of his pocket.

MJ took it from him once more and looked at the bottle oddly. "Maybe these are _your_ pills," she realized, seeing the pain in Stephen's face that he was trying so hard to hide.

"But if they are, why are they prescribed to my wife?" Stephen wondered.

MJ shrugged. "Something in my brain that may or may not be a memory is reminding me that sometimes doctors prescribe drugs meant for patients with either famous names or well-known reputations to another name--a wife, a parent, a doctor."

"So am _I_ the junkie?" Stephen said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Or maybe you're just in chronic pain," MJ guessed, gently rubbing his back. "The date on the bottle's just a few weeks old--you might have been injured recently. Maybe you _both_ were, and that's why she has a bodyguard." She shook out a pill and put it in his hands, then took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. "Take one if you're in _that_ much pain." She handed him the pill bottle. "We all need to be in top form if we're going to figure out what's going on here."

Stephen reluctantly swallowed the pill, then finished the glass of water, stuffed the pills back in his pocket, and leaned forward against the counter, not objecting to MJ's continuing backrub. "Something about this whole thing doesn't make sense," he said after a moment's thought. "An overprotective bodyguard giving a rich society woman that he's supposed to be protecting a personally engraved wristwatch. A snobby wife wearing all the trimmings of wealth but carrying Class II narcotics in her pocket. Me, obviously the true heir and probably the real rich one, doing photo shoots for a perfume model. I mean, no offense…"

"None taken," MJ assured.

"Thanks. But something doesn't fit here." He pulled out the plane tickets. "These are for Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cranston, but only one of us looks like the casual travel type."

"Are you suggesting that I'm supposed to be playing the part of Mrs. Cranston on your plane trip?" MJ said, not entirely sure she was opposed to the idea.

"Both the tickets are one way…and I woke up with you in my arms…"

MJ's eyes bugged. "You…you think we were having an affair?"

"I'm not sure about _that_, but I'm pretty sure the real 'Mrs. Cranston' and I are already living separate lives. No wedding pictures. No wedding rings. Engraved jewelry from her bodyguard. Nobody knows what was going on at the time we all woke up, but she _was_ wearing a lot more jewelry than most normal people do, and who wears fur hats and stoles indoors these days? Nobody's yet been able to identify Andrew except as someone's staff member. She wrote a note to tell him to take a month off--but from doing _what_? If I'm the one going to Italy, I'm going to be the one giving my staff their time off."

"So Andrew's on her staff?"

"Precisely. He probably _is_ her divorce lawyer, like she said earlier. He didn't object when I 'suggested' that the three of them go searching the house, probably because he's not supposed to take orders from me."

"This is insane," MJ whispered, blown away. "Peter, what you're suggesting is…"

"Madness?" He turned around to face her.

She was surprised to realize she hadn't moved her hand from his back. And she wasn't sure she wanted to, either. But she kept reminding herself that they'd both vowed not to just blindly accept thing at face value. "You could be dead wrong. You could be so wrong about this. It could be something else entirely, and if you're wrong…"

"I've got two tickets for tonight's flight to Rome in my pocket. Did you see the personal Holy Water basin on the front door frame? Clearly I'm Catholic. Maybe I'm trying to beat her to the punch and have the marriage annulled. If I'm right, then now's my chance while she doesn't remember who I am…"

MJ was still rubbing his back, leaning against him so she could hear his whispers. Her mouth felt dry. Her mouth parted just so she could lick her lips. "I don't know who I am, either," She whispered to him.

"Neither do I." Stephen whispered intensely. "We're free from all of it. Everything that connected us to our old lives, our old problems, is gone now…we could do anything, the ultimate fresh start…our memories might never come back. If I'm right, then I am free…as long as I get on that plane."

MJ's face was an inch away, and Stephen was suddenly not breathing.

"I'm Mary Jane Watson," she whispered. "I'm a model."

"I'm Peter Cranston. I'm your photographer."

"Our memories might never come back," she whispered breathlessly.

"We could make new ones," he whispered back to her.

She leaned in to kiss him.

Their lips were just millimeters from touching when the sound of smashing wood and breaking glass broke the intense moment.

Stephen took off running toward the sound, MJ right behind him.

Scene Break

Sarah had been looking through the lobby when the door smashed open. Five men in masks and dark ninja-like robes burst in, and one of them leveled his gun right at the startled brunette.

Sarah screamed.

Suddenly, something blurred past her faster than her eyes could follow. But somehow, she could see as clear as day that the blur was the man she called "Steve".

Peter grabbed the first man's gun arm and broke the wrist. Without even releasing him, he aimed an impossibly high kick at the second, sending him flying a good five feet into the wall.

Moving without thought, without hesitation, he snatched up the door, held it in front of him, and calmly charged the final three. They scattered in a panic, and Peter was on the move. A twin fist punch to the jaw knocked one of them cold, a fatally smooth sweeping kick to the second threw him off his feet, and a bruising roundhouse nailed the last one.

Stephen and MJ had arrived just in time to see the last two fall.

As everyone stared in shock, Peter picked up the door, put it back in place, and pulled a wrought iron coat rack off the wall, twisting it around so that it would hold the door shut.

Everyone stared blankly at him.

"Well," Andrew said finally. "I guess you _are_ her bodyguard."

"Bodyguard?" Peter whooped. "I'm Steve the superhero!"

Everyone was staring at Peter, wondering for a moment why they thought they recognized his motions, his speed, his fluidity…

…everyone, that is, except Stephen, who was staring at the men on the floor. "We should search them for ID," he said firmly.

The pure calm in his voice after that round of excitement got everyone's attention.

The man they were all calling "Peter" was definitely no longer startled, panicked, scared, or otherwise uncomfortable. Instead, his eyes were hard and cold and his voice was as authoritative as authoritative got. "These guys broke in with guns. They don't have sacks, and they knew we were in here. You don't come in a place like this without huge sacks, and you definitely don't come in when people are already here if you're planning a simple smash-and-grab. They were after _us_." He looked around. "The fact that we all lost our memories at the same time, less than an hour before they struck, tells me there's a connection, which tells me these guys have some influence, meaning that this might not be the last attack. If they're attacking us, they had a reason, or whoever hired them has a reason, which means one or more us may know these men. Anybody recognize them?"

Nobody answered. They were too busy staring at Stephen.

"What?" Stephen asked, not sure why everyone seemed so astonished.

"Nothing." MJ responded, giving him a grin and a salute. "Just a little surprised is all. You've got this…Commander Peter Cranston thing going on."

Sarah grimaced slightly at the flirtatious redhead. "O.K., so a bunch of thugs just broke in here and tried to kill us. Somebody call the police."

"That's a good idea," Andrew said. "Now, if we could find a phone…"

"…you'd find it not working," Stephen remarked, pointing to the one near the entranceway that had gotten knocked off a side table while Peter had been throwing thugs around. "Again, you don't break into a house like this if you're not sure you've covered things like burglar alarms and phone lines. I'd be willing to bet money there's no dial tone on any phone we can find in here."

Peter picked up the phone off the floor. Although it had been battered, the lines were still connected. But when he put the receiver to his ear, he heard nothing. "How much do I owe you?" he wisecracked.

"We'll settle up later," Stephen replied. "This isn't a random act. We're targets in here."

"So, let's get out of here," Sarah suggested.

"Bad idea," Stephen responded. "It's starting to get dark. The driveway's not well-lit, and even if it is, I'd bet money our friends have found a way to counteract that. It's probably 200 feet to the nearest cross-street. We try for the road and we may not make it. Not only that, even if we _could_ make the road, we don't even really know where we are. Yeah, we can look out the windows and try to find local landmarks that will trigger some memory of what city we're in and where we are in that particular city, but I'm not even sure that will help us. We don't know who else has a grudge against us, we don't know what our relationship to these attackers are, we have no idea if there are more outside waiting for us, and we don't know if the police would help us or arrest us for something, because there is clearly a lot more going on here than meets the eye."

This was a thought that had not occurred to anybody.

Stephen was still going. "We need to really give this place a thorough going-over. Ground floor, especially--we need to know if we're alone in this place. There probably was an alarm system, but it's likely been disabled, so make sure to check doors and windows. There are probably other defenses here--we need to find them." His thoughts were whirling faster than he could get them out, but the logic they brought to his confusion was extraordinarily soothing. "Nobody should go anywhere alone, and nobody leave the ground floor without telling somebody where they are. This place is huge, and we don't need to split up any farther than we need to. And we definitely need weapons." He hesitated. "Well, everybody but Steve over there. Find anything that might be useful for self-defense. And we _definitely_ need to step up the search for more detailed identity documents, because that will probably help us figure out why all of this happened in the first place and who might have wanted us dead. Keep in mind we're pretty much trapped in here until morning when we at least might have a chance in broad daylight, so like it or not, we are all in this together. Now, let's get moving." He turned to Sarah. "Sarah…_honey_…" He wasn't sure the endearment felt right, but MJ was right; there was no use arguing with the names or the roles right now. "…if you've got a bodyguard, there must be a reason, so Steve needs to stay with you at all times. Andrew, it looks like you have the best sense of where everything is, so you should probably stay with Steve and Sarah and keep my wife safe. MJ, come with me. Let's meet back here in…" He looked at the hall clock. "…thirty minutes. That should be enough time to at least search the ground floor." He turned to walk away, then realized nobody was moving.

They were all staring at him. Every one of them. MJ was practically licking her lips. Sarah looked annoyed that someone other than her was giving orders. Peter looked as if he wasn't sure he should trust anything. And Andrew was trying not to look any of them in the eye, as if he wasn't used to such firm handling.

Stephen was rubbing his temples again, trying to clear his brain. "What?" he asked, annoyed. "We don't have time for lollygagging around. Get to work!"

With that, he stormed away, MJ right behind him.

"I don't think I trust my husband," Sarah said bluntly as the pair departed.

Andrew frowned. "Why not?"

"Were you even listening? He's got that kind of brain in his head after fumbling around in sheer terror when we woke up. It's like he's two different people--a bumbling fool when he's caught off-guard, and a warfare strategy expert when he thinks about it. Which one is the _real_ Peter Cranston?"

"Losing your memory and having no clue of who you are, where you are, and what your life is really like can have that effect on one's confidence," Andrew pointed out.

"I didn't have any problem with confidence," Sarah sniffed.

"That's because you're good at putting up a defensive front," Peter returned. "I saw what you're like when that front breaks down. You're no different from him."

"Oh, so _you're_ turning on me now?" Sarah complained.

"Stop it," Andrew interrupted. "Mr. Cranston may be a paranoid schizophrenic, but he's got a point. We need to be talking _and_ searching, not talking _instead of_ searching." He gave a look around. "Let's go this way."

Andrew led the way out of the foyer, leaving the destruction and carnage behind them.

Scene Break

MJ was almost skipping behind Stephen as he marched. "Peter, that was amazing!"

Stephen felt a little amazed and a little confused about how all of that suddenly came into focus inside his brain when he _still_ couldn't remember who he really was. "I didn't know I had it in me."

MJ was almost giggling like a giddy schoolgirl. "Here all this time I was thinking that you were all insecure and scared and trying to run for it, and then you just start spinning out orders and strategies. It was…" She couldn't find another word, so she decided to repeat herself. "…amazing."

Stephen smiled shyly. "Thanks." He opened a door. "Ah! Armory!"

MJ at first thought he was exaggerating, then saw the suits of armors, coats of arms, old rifles, handguns, and Oriental swords on the walls. "Wow. You sure this place isn't some kind of museum?"

"Not really," Stephen shrugged, then reached for one of the antique pistols on the wall.

"Now maybe we can defend ourselves," MJ said with a laugh, remembering how absurdly firepower-armed the men who'd broken in were.

Stephen started to answer, and then noticed the pistol was attached to the wall by a steel cable that disappeared behind the wall. He gave the line a tug to see if he could loosen the cable.

The pistol came off the wall and the cable pulled out with it as well…and then a large picture frame rotated to reveal a row of wicked-looking shotguns, semi-automatics, and other more modern firearms.

Now MJ was beginning to get unnerved. "Maybe you're not just some rich guy. Maybe you're some kind of mobster."

Stephen was just staring at the weapons, feeling parts of his brain once more swirling with thoughts and possibilities. _Dammit, this is __so__ annoying,_ he thought as he shook his head and tried to clear it.

"Did you say something?" MJ asked.

Stephen just kept staring at the weapons. "I _know_ these."

MJ wasn't sure she wanted to ask the next question, but she did anyway. "In what way?"

Stephen was rubbing his forehead again as that annoying thought whirlwind started gathering steam once more. "These weapons. I know every make and model. I know how they work. I can take them apart, clean them, put them together, load them, and fire them. I _know_ them." He looked at MJ with haunted eyes. "How can I know all that and not know who I am?"

MJ gave him a sympathetic smile. As charismatic as he was when he was constructing strategies and deconstructing invasion scenarios, he was at his most intriguing when he let that façade fall away and showed the uncertain man underneath. "Given the situation, it may be a useful skill to have, even if you can't remember why you have it."

"You're right about that." Stephen pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Headache back already?" she noticed.

"Kind of." He wasn't sure how to categorize this sensation inside his head, so he went for an easy analogy. "I feel like my brain's running a million miles an hour with no way of putting on the brakes." He shrugged off analysis of his brain's activities for now and decided to just go with the flow of what it was telling him. "Let's get some of these for later. I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it."

"Me too," MJ agreed.

Both of them reached for a shotgun. Their hands brushed as they reached.

Stephen looked at MJ. MJ looked at Stephen.

Stephen was breathing deeper. MJ licked her lips.

This time, neither hesitated to draw the other one closer and lose themselves in a deep, passionate kiss.

Scene Break

Peter started searching through desk drawers in what the trio could only deduce was a library, filled top to bottom with books on every wall, with a leather armchair and a writing desk in the middle of the room. "Nothing. No ID, no weapons, nothing."

"Well, this is a library, after all," Andrew remarked, nonetheless searching bookshelves for anything that might help clarify the situation.

Sarah was still angry after finding yet another picture in the room that reminded her that while the man they knew as "Peter" might belong to this family, she was nowhere to be found. "Look, are _neither_ of you going to consider the possibility that maybe Peter is behind all of this?"

Peter rolled his eyes. "O.K., I get it, you're not enamored with your husband, and he probably is cheating on you with that ditzy perfume girl, but…him doing something to knock out all of our memories? Come on, _that's_ a bit of a stretch."

"You really think so?" Sarah responded. "Everything about him is contradictory. He dresses like that, but he lives like this. He acts like he's freaked out, but he thinks like a general. I don't trust him, and I don't trust the model either. She's a ditz, and a tramp. He's married to me, and he knows it, and he doesn't seem at all uncomfortable cavorting around with that…that…"

Peter sighed. "I'm just saying, don't jump to too many conclusions. For all we know, we could all be really good friends, or even partners in an orgy. The point is that we _don't_ know anything. So let's stop looking for irrational explanations and start looking for rational ones."

"When you have eliminated the impossible," Andrew interjected, "whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Sherlock Holmes," Peter smiled.

"At least a respectable paraphrase," Andrew replied.

Sarah threw up her hands and stormed out of the room.

Peter was quickly behind her. "Hey…hold up."

Sarah came to a stop and was now hiding her face away from Peter.

Peter put his arm around her gently. "Come on. It's going to be O.K. I promise."

She looked at Peter, her eyes welling with tears. "Steve…is it me? I mean…I'll grant you that it's a special situation, but excuse me for not immediately pairing up like animals into the ark. I mean…is it me? Do I just send off 'Keep Away' vibes?"

"Not that I've noticed." Peter gave her a warm smile and a pat on the shoulder.

She finally relaxed into the light hug he was giving. "I didn't thank you for saving my life."

Peter smiled impishly. "What kind of bodyguard would I be if I didn't?"

Sarah smiled back at the easy joking manner, enjoying him. But that only made their current situation even more uncomfortable. "At least you're protecting me. My _husband_ seems more interested in cavorting with MJ."

Peter sighed. "You don't know that."

She felt herself tremble again as a mental picture that repulsed her to even think about would not leave her alone. "Yes, I do."

Scene Break

Stephen and MJ were necking furiously, getting deeper and deeper into a well of lust swirling around them. And, while Stephen found himself wanting desperately to take this further, something inside his head kept nagging at him, almost as if he were trying to tell himself that he shouldn't be doing this. "We might still be in danger," Stephen gasped as she clawed at his shirt.

She smiled into his neck as her fingers worked the buttons on his tattered flannel shirt. "Would you protect me?"

"Yes." And with that, they returned to kissing madly, Stephen still trying to ignore his inner doubts.

MJ's hands went under his shirt, and she drew back sharply.

"What?" Stephen asked, surprised.

Amazed, MJ reached out and pulled off his shirt.

Stephen gaped. He was covered in scars. Dozens of them.

MJ was staring. He had a flawless physique, but he was covered in scars. And the kinds of scars made her sweat.

"Bullets, knives, fire…" Stephen whispered. "No wonder my back was hurting."

And that was when the headache he'd been fighting off decided to assert itself over all the rest of the sensations in his brain. "Ow!" he cried out, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to stop the building pressure behind his eyes.

"Sinus?" MJ guessed from the pressure points he was using.

"Must be. I haven't had one this bad since I was thirteen." He froze. "Wait…why did I just say that?"

MJ threw her arms around him in a tight hug. "Your memory's coming back. That's at least the fourth thing you've remembered about yourself and what you can do in the last hour."

Stephen held her close, trying to let the pleasure overcome the pain. "I wish I could remember more. It's like my brain is disconnected in places. I know there are supposed to be connections, but where they go…I have no clue."

"You'll get there." She broke the hug and reached into his pocket. "Maybe you need another one."

Stephen looked at the pills. "45mg at a shot. Wow. That's a lot of narcotics that close together."

MJ pointed to the label. "It does say 'as needed for pain', no time restrictions."

Stephen shook another pill out of the bottle. "Yeah." He hesitated only for a moment, then swallowed the pill dry, taking a moment to feel it go down his throat. He found himself hoping it would kick in soon…and then felt troubled by that very thought, as if he were doing something forbidden.

But, then, forbidden felt good sometimes. He looked at MJ and smiled.

She leaned against him and held her face against his bare chest.

Scene Break

Sarah had mentally seen enough. "I'm going to find my husband. You stay here."

"We're not supposed to go anywhere alone," Andrew called after her.

She whirled on him. "Why is that, Andrew? Because Peter said so? Why are we taking orders from _him_? He doesn't know any more than the rest of us, right?"

Andrew sent Peter a look. Peter nodded. By silent agreement, they decided not to leave this woman alone in a room with her husband and his redhead. Peter took off after her.

Scene Break

Stephen looked down at the bright red hair against his shoulder, and felt a wave of Deja Vu. He remembered MJ. He was sure of it. He remembered the feel of her pressed against him, and his hands around her middle holding her close. He remembered soft lighting and the feel of nervous anticipation. It was definitely a new memory. Much more recent than the headaches or the rooms they were in.

After a moment, Stephen reluctantly shrugged himself loose from MJ's embrace and pulled his shirt back on.

"Feeling better?" MJ asked him, giving his shoulder a rub.

He gave her a nod, but looked at the medicine once more. "This worries me a lot. It's obvious I need these painkillers, so why are they in my wife's name?"

"Maybe somebody doesn't want you to have them," MJ suggested. "Or maybe she wants to know for sure how many you're taking."

"Or maybe there's something more to all of this than meets the eye." He turned to her. "We got attacked by armed gunmen. Somebody tried to kill us tonight. Somebody knew we were here and got to us before we could leave."

MJ stared at him. "You don't think…"

"Oh, yes, I do. Think about it. We've lost our memories…but she seems _really_ in control of herself. How do we know Sarah's actually lost her memories? If she is my wife, if we really are in the process of getting divorce…how much would it be worth to _you_ to get your hands on the fortune that probably goes along with this house?"

"Peter…this is insane…"

He took her chin in his hands. "We need to get out _now_. Now, while there's still time." He pulled her body close to his. "Come with me."

MJ felt her breath catch. The look in his eyes was hypnotic, and she couldn't take her eyes off his…

"Rome," he whispered, his voice barely audible. The fear in her voice seemed to strengthen his resolve to bring matters to a conclusion one way or another, and he needed her to calm down and agree with him. "After that, London. Paris. Sydney. Anywhere you want…anywhere _we_ want…"

MJ could hardly breathe. "We could be tracked! We could be fugitives! We could be…"

His voice was so soft, it was barely audible…yet his words went straight to her brain as he looked intensely at her. "We could be _us_."

MJ could no longer resist. "Let's go," she whispered.

They fell into a deep kiss…

…and then a gasp cut them off. "I knew it," a female voice hissed angrily.

Stephen and MJ whipped toward the doorway.

Sarah stood there, tears running down her cheeks and anger distorting her expression. "You couldn't even wait until we could figure out who we _really_ were," she said, her voice dripping with venom. "You don't even know what's going on in our marriage…"

"…and neither do you," Stephen interrupted. "Neither of us do. That's the point. Our lives are gone. We're all clean slates. All I have are my instincts…and they're telling me it's time to move on."

Sarah looked shocked. "I'm your wife. Doesn't that mean anything? I mean…I don't know if we were happy either, but dammit, you could at least wait till you know one way or the other!"

"And if I never know? If I never remember? If I just sit back and let you drain me dry while you and your bodyguard trade wristwatches forever?"

"This is about Steve?" Sarah was apoplectic, and started storming toward the couple. "A guy we're pretty sure is a trained bodyguard saves my life and you immediately brand me as a floozy while you run off with this bimbo…"

"No! You do not call her that!" Stephen snarled. "Don't ever talk about my MJ that way again."

"Your MJ?!" Sarah scorned, right in his face now.

"Just because you don't have enough nerve to show some kind of warmth and affection…"

"And I'm sure she's shown you _plenty_." Sarah snarled. "More than just the shirtless snuggles in the armory."

It took Stephen only a second to catch the odd statement. "Wait a minute…how did you know _that_?" He started looking around. "Where's the video camera?"

"Does it _matter_?" Sarah said, still infuriated.

"As a matter of fact, it does--if you're watching video cameras, I need to know where they are so we can use them to search the house…"

"There's no video cameras!" Sarah shouted, enraged.

"Oh, what, you can just see things in your head or something?"

The argument was interrupted when Peter found the trio. "What's going on in here?" he said, feeling the tension in the air make the back of his neck tingle annoyingly once more.

Stephen turned on Peter. "She's watching us somehow," he said, pointing to Sarah. "Where are the cameras?"

"What are you talking about, dude?"

"Don't call me 'dude'. You're obviously in on this…"

"In on what? What the Hell are you talking about?"

"Unless my wife is seeing things, then there's some kind of-"

"I _am_ seeing things!" Sarah almost screamed.

That made Stephen turn around. "What?"

Sarah was crying tears of fear now. "I don't understand…I can't stop it…it just happens..."

Stephen's mind got caught up in a weird thought whirlwind again. "You're clairvoyant?"

Peter looked completely aghast. "Wait….you _believe_ her? Clairvoyance isn't real…that's impossible…"

"So's superhuman strength and speed," MJ pointed out.

"Clairvoyance is real." Stephen said with absolute certainty.

"Yes. it is." Sarah said with the same clarity.

"How do you know?" Peter pressed.

_**The Shadow Knows.**_

Sarah spun. Who had said _that_?! Stephen hadn't reacted. Neither had Peter or MJ, so they hadn't heard it.

Stephen looked at Sarah, then came over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Calm down," he said, softly.

Sarah wanted to tell him to go to Hell, but instead she began taking deeper breaths and feeling her heart slow down.

"Good. Now…you're telling me the truth? There's no secret cameras anywhere?"

"None that I know about," Sarah confirmed.

"O.K. This could come in handy. You can see things…" He turned to Peter. "You're super-strong…"

"…and you're a detail person," MJ interjected.

"And you're a good organizer," Stephen nodded to MJ, then looked around the room. "Let's stop working at cross-purposes for a minute and see if we can figure out how we can put all this together and get through the night." He turned to Sarah. "In the morning, we'll resume…marital negotiations, for lack of a better term."

Peter felt that same weird rattling in the back of his head he had earlier, only this time it was ramped up times ten. He looked around nervously.

"What?" Stephen asked.

And at that moment, broken glass echoed through the house.

Peter sprinted out of the room. Stephen snatched one of the shotguns off the wall and raced after him…leaving MJ and Sarah to stare at each other.

After a moment, MJ picked up a shotgun herself and pointedly pumped it. "You may have _him_ fooled for now, but not me," she said in a threatening tone to Sarah. "You're nothing but a desperate social climber. Stay away from him."

"Go to Hell, bimbo," Sarah snarled back. "Until we know differently, he's married to _me_, so keep your fake manicured nails off him."

Andrew came rushing in and found the two of them staring each other down. Sarah with dried tear marks on her face, MJ with a shotgun. "I heard the glass break. Where are Steve and Peter?"

"They're running it down," MJ said.

"Well, we'd better go help them."

Sarah picked up a shotgun and handed it to Andrew. "MJ, why don't you go in front of us?"

Scene Break

"So, do I want to know what that was all about?" Peter asked.

"As if you don't know already," Stephen grumbled.

"If I did, how would I know? It's not like any of us have our memories…"

The two turned the corner and stopped. The bay windows at the end of the hall were broken. There was no sign of anybody, but neither man had to voice aloud what they both knew: They weren't alone. Someone had broken in once more.

Stephen took up position at one side of the hallway, Peter took the other, and they started opening doors.

Peter reached to open the next door in line when something in his head screeched at him. Moving without thought, he threw himself back against the wall next to the door when a basketball-sized hole was suddenly blown through it.

Stephen whirled around and fired back through the door blindly.

The closed door he had passed on the way to fire at the assailant who'd shot at Peter opened quickly and slammed something into the back of his skull.

Stephen hit the floor, and a man bolted out of the room and back down the hallway.

Peter grabbed a heavy statue off a nearby pedestal and threw it at the man.

Or, at least, he tried to. But the statue clung to the fingers on his right hand, as if both the statue and his hand had been coated in super glue.

_What the…?_ Peter pulled at the statue, and it came off of his right hand. He could still see the man about to turn down the corridor where the girls were, so he attempted to throw it again.

This time, the statue clung to his fingers once more, then rolled off and landed on the floor.

"Quit playing games!" Stephen snapped angrily.

"I'm not," Peter said, now completely confused as to what was happening. "It stuck to my hand…"

"Sure it did," Stephen said in disgust.

Peter was about to fire back a retort when a sudden scream and a gunshot--a pistol, then a shotgun--came from around the corner. The pair rushed to respond.

Moments later, they found Andrew on the floor with a pool of blood forming under his shoulder, and Sarah on the floor holding her face in pain. MJ had her shotgun trained on a set of doors down the hall, but whipped around when Peter and Stephen approached.

"Whoa!" both Stephen and Peter said aloud.

MJ lowered the gun. "Bastard got away, but he's going to be on the run." She gestured with her head at the doors, one of which had buckshot holes in it from the shotgun.

"How many were there?" Stephen asked, coming over to her.

"One. Got the drop on us too fast for me. Winged Andrew and knocked Sarah over."

Peter, meanwhile, had come to Sarah's aid, a fact that did not escape Sarah's notice. "Thanks, _darling_," she hissed at the other man.

Stephen turned to look back. "She all right?" he asked Peter.

Peter nodded, looking annoyed that Stephen seemed more concerned with the guy that got away than the two people who were injured.

Stephen looked down the hall, then back at the injured parties. As bad as it was that two of their number were down, he found himself both amused and annoyed that the two who were down seemed to be the least capable of protecting themselves at this moment. And he really needed people who knew their way around with a weapon _and_ could use it to back him up, since it was pretty obvious Steve-the-bodyguard wasn't all that interested in watching anyone else's back. "We need to get after him. Steve, stay here and watch my wife and Andrew. MJ, come with me."

Peter looked more than a little ticked off that apparently Stephen would rather have a girl with a gun behind him than a man with superpowers. _Guy's got one Hell of a massive ego,_ he mentally snarked.

"Steve?" Sarah asked, now scared.

"I'm here, babe," Peter answered, returning his attention to her.

"Somebody's trying to kill us."

"I know." He turned to Andrew. "Let's see if we can find a safe place to stash him for now."

"Don't leave me…"

Peter put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Then come with me."

Sarah got to her feet, looking shaky.

Peter scooped up Andrew. "You don't even need to say it," he remarked as he carried Andrew into the dining room. "I think he knows more than he's telling, too. He seems _way_ too assured and confident."

"I think my husband is trying to kill me," Sarah pronounced.

Now _that_ got Peter's attention. "What?"

"Why else would I need a bodyguard? That guy went right for me and Andrew. Peter makes sure he's the first one armed. And not five minutes ago, I found him getting ready to run out with his little…"

Peter was now having less trouble than ever believing those two were ever married. _His and hers paranoia…how charming._ "O.K. look, even assuming that's true, why do it this way?"

"It's deniable. Think about it! Peter's obviously expecting a divorce! If he's trying to get out of the house, and he is, then nobody knows what happened except him, and if it's not discovered till he's got himself and his girlfriend in there out of the country, then he's home free!"

"If that's the case then why'd you let them out of your sight?" Peter demanded, tying Andrew's shoulder with table linens he found in a drawer.

"Because I don't know who to trust." She looked scared. "Steve…I just need to hear the words…"

Peter put a stack of folded napkins under Andrew's head and gave Sarah a hug. "You can trust me. I'm your bodyguard, after all. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

Sarah felt better that he was genuinely concerned. _See that hubby?_ She mentally snarked. _You aren't the only one._

Andrew let out a groan. "Uh… what happened?"

"You got shot." Peter reported.

"Is it bad?"

Peter shook his head. "Looks like the bullet missed everything; went straight through."

Andrew nodded. "Need a bandage, and… need to…" he trailed off woozily.

Scene Break

"I think my wife has Steve in her pocket," Stephen told MJ quietly as they reached the set of doors. He poked his shotgun into the doorway, peeked inside, then gestured for MJ to follow him.

Now they were in a stairwell that both of them assumed was some kind of servant passageway. "Well, he _is_ her bodyguard, right? I would hope he'd have her welfare at heart…"

"That's not what I mean." He started up the staircase, gun still trained on the set of steps above them.

MJ shook her head. _Paranoid Petey,_ she found herself thinking. "What did he do this time?"

"He had the chance to take down one of the intruders…but let him get away."

MJ stopped him. "Wait…if they're working for your wife, then why'd they hit Andrew and not me?"

"I don't know." He kept moving.

She hurried to join him. "I'm just saying, maybe we ought to find out before we start accusing people of working with other people."

They reached the top floor landing. "Fine. Meanwhile, I'll make sure I have guns and _they_ don't." He pushed open the door carefully.

The doors opened to reveal a luxurious upper level to the manor house. Stephen gestured with his eyes for her to lead the way out, and he covered them from behind.

MJ opened a door with the tip of her shotgun. "Bedroom."

Stephen nodded and led the way inside. "Master suite, looks like." He took a careful look around, then sniffed the air.

"Smell something funny?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Familiar." He lifted the collar of his shirt toward his nose to confirm something he'd already noticed about himself. "Cigar smoke. This is _my_ room." Then he noticed the suitcases. "And clearly I'm packing to go somewhere."

MJ quietly closed the door and checked the suitcases. "No women's clothes in here, so you weren't planning on taking Mrs. Cranston. So, where are my clothes?"

"Probably back at your house."

"Then why was I over here?"

He looked at her. "What?"

"If I'm escaping with you, why aren't my clothes here? And if they're back at my house, why am _I_ here?"

Stephen didn't have an answer for that. "Maybe you have a car outside. Maybe I'm taking you to the House of Armani once we get there."

That thought charmed her. Or maybe it was just the way Stephen had of dropping his voice low and soft that was so enchanting. "Or maybe neither of us will be wearing many clothes."

Stephen gave her an appreciative look. "Now _there's_ a thought." He returned to studying the room lest they lose themselves in each other again and forget why they were upstairs searching to begin with.

On the dresser sat a set of photographs in fine silver frames. One was the older man he'd seen in pictures downstairs, the one who wasn't marrying the bride, the one who'd been in all the pictures of himself as an adult. _Too young to be my grandfather, but not by much…uncle, maybe?_

The next photo was of Sarah, dressed in a rather nice and expensive-looking dress, the first photo he'd found of her in the house. _And in my bedroom, too,_ he noted to himself. _So, that kind of confirms that she and I are somehow connected together…but how? She can't be my wife, or at least can't be a wife I'm on good terms with. But I still have her picture on my dresser…what exactly __is__ going on here?_ He casually laid the picture frame face down on the dresser so that MJ wouldn't notice it.

Then he spotted the last photo…the two men who'd adopted the names "Peter" and "Steve" sitting in an office together. A laptop was on the desk where he was sitting, and a camera bag sat on a windowsill behind where "Steve" was. _Wait…I thought __I__ was the photographer. Why is the camera bag on Steve's side of the room? And why am I sitting in an office with my wife's bodyguard in the first place?_ This photo disturbed him even more than the one of Sarah. Making sure MJ wasn't looking, he laid the frame face down and slid the picture out from underneath the backing, then slipped the picture into his pocket.

MJ, meanwhile, was searching the bags. "Hey, there's a false compartment in here," she said.

Stephen was relieved MJ wasn't paying attention to him as he made a quick decision to slip the photo of Sarah out of its frame and stick it in his pocket as well. "What did I stash in it?"

She pulled out a slouch hat and set it at a rakish angle on her head. "Nice hat."

Stephen gave an appreciative nod. "Looks good on you." He returned to his own hunting for clues. "What else is in there?"

"Looks like a cape. You sure you're not a superhero?"

"I don't think I'm the spandex type. What else?"

MJ pushed the cloak aside and gasped.

He turned around at the sound to find her pulling two large black leather shoulder holsters out of the bag. In each holster was a silver-handled gun, which his brain identified for him as a .45 automatic.

"You were right," he noted. "Silver guns. Looks like I have _way_ too much money to spend."

"Yeah, but they've got style." She pulled the holster on and fastened it into place, then pulled the brim of the hat down over one eye. "How do I look?"

There were a lot of words Stephen wanted to use to describe her, so he settled on a simple one. "Dangerous."

The two of them moved in together to join their lips passionately once more.

Scene Break

Down the hall from the mixed-up romantics, Paul Brackett was holed up in a corner of a long-unused room in the manor house, trying to figure out what the Hell had gone wrong.

He'd arrived back at the house, preparing to just waltz in the front door, strip the trappings of Stephen Cranston's identity from safes and paperwork, and then leave. Instead, he found the front door locked again. Once he broke in through the front windows, he found his henchmen either injured or dead, bound and gagged with torn curtains, left to rot in a coat closet. He'd managed to get one untied and on his feet, fetched weapons, and set out to find out what happened to the household residents…

…when suddenly Parker and Cranston came around the corner toward him, Cranston heavily armed and Parker heavily muscled.

His man fired on the door that Parker was standing outside of. Maybe he should have warned the poor sot that he was trying to get the drop on _Spiderman_, but, hey, some henchmen are too stupid to live, and Cranston had whipped around with a shotgun and blown the flunky away. Good riddance to bad rubbish, but still, it was annoying.

Luckily Brackett had managed to find another door to the room through which to escape, and he'd nailed Cranston from behind with it and gotten out of there. He hadn't intended to shoot Cranston's girlfriend and butler, but, hey, the redhead had a shotgun, and it was kill or be killed. He wasn't thrilled that the redhead was actually good at shooting, though; she'd darn near put a slug through the back of his head before he got into the servants' stairwell.

Now, he'd missed his flight. And he was still no closer to getting the last trappings of Cranston's identity. Time to call in some bigger guns. He dialed his cell phone.

"It's me," Brackett said to the person who answered. "Your guys are sloppy. All five of them are still alive." He listened. "I don't want excuses, I want results. Let's not forget who's paying whom. Get me some hired help at Cranston Manor _pronto_. Tell them they're to kill anyone they find breathing who _isn't_ me."

Footsteps coming down the hall made Brackett hang up the phone quickly. The voices he heard were Cranston and the redhead chick, and apparently they were both armed, because he heard shotguns being primed. He thought quickly, then realized what he could do.

Scene Break

As Stephen and MJ continued their search down the hall, Stephen spotted what looked like fresh fingerprints on the brass doorknob in front of him. He gestured for quiet, then reached for the door and tried to turn the knob.

It didn't move.

Stephen frowned. Every other door up here had opened easily. He tried to turn the knob again.

Nothing.

He looked at the knob oddly. He wasn't sure _why_ he was looking at the knob--it was clearly locked, and the fingerprints could easily have been from their attacker trying to find a place to hide and abandoning the locked room--but still, something wasn't right. He took a step back and prepared to throw his shoulder into the door.

A rattling sound down the hall got his attention before he could. He backed away from the door, giving it an odd glance once more, and then headed off with MJ toward the sound.

Scene Break

Behind the door, Brackett breathed a sigh of relief. If Cranston had been 100 aware of his own identity--and thus his full powers--there was no way in Hell Brackett would have been able to pull off such an elementary mind-clouding trick as discouraging a hand from turning a knob and making the ears hear movement in another room. But he could feel Cranston's mind trying to fight back even as he spun the clouding suggestion. It horrified him to realize that the only thing keeping the full force of Cranston's powers from springing back together were the few broken pathways in his self-memory that Brackett had managed to sneak in there before they both ran out of mental energy. Yet another reason to wrap this up fast.

Scene Break

Downstairs, Peter had found a plastic bag of ice for Sarah's bruised cheek, and a First Aid kit. He was about to search for something for them all to eat when Stephen came into the dining room, followed by MJ. "No luck," Stephen said. "Whoever this guy is, he's good. We were chasing noises from room to room but never did hit on him."

"So, we're no better off than we were," Sarah complained.

"Not really," Stephen admitted, he noticed the First Aid kit and went to work with gauze and bandages on Andrews shoulder. Once he'd finished, he looked up at Peter. "Find any food?"

Peter shook his head, then left the room and returned bearing a heavy tray of plastic water bottles and glasses of ice. "Expensive bottled H2O, though. I'm presuming this is ours and not for some spoiled-rotten cat."

"Wouldn't surprise me either way," MJ noted, brushing the sweaty hair off her face.

"Andrew going to be all right?" Peter asked.

"Bullet went right through the meat. No breaks, no severed arteries. He can hold out a while, but he'll need a doctor once we're out of here."

Each person took a glass--Peter poured one for Andrew, who was lying on the floor still looking pale--and sat down at the table with all of them. "So, what are we drinking to?" he asked.

"To the hope of regaining our memories," MJ said.

"To the hope of one day understand what the Hell happened here," Sarah admitted.

"To the hope of regaining my life again," Stephen added.

"To not spending another night in _this_ place," Peter finished.

Four glasses clinked together.

Peter started to look around nervously.

Stephen had begun to recognize that look--when Peter looked that worried, something was wrong. "What is it?"

Peter shook his head. "I can't place it. Was there anywhere you looked upstairs where you felt you should have taken a closer look?"

Stephen started to get offended, then remembered the strange locked door. "Yeah, as a matter of fact." He turned to MJ. "Take him upstairs and show him that weird door."

MJ wasn't happy about the fact that the man she loved was sending her away, but she decided not to argue. "Follow me," she said, leaving her shotgun with Stephen and drawing one of the .45s from the shoulder holsters she'd appropriated.

Peter and Stephen exchanged an odd look, then Peter followed MJ up the stairs.

"Why did you do that?" Sarah asked. "Decided you want to play bodyguard for a while?"

Stephen turned in his chair to face Sarah. "Do you even remember our marriage?" he asked. "Any of it? Even one second of it?"

Sarah started to get angry, but the question did its job--make her reconsider the notion that the two of them actually _were_ married. "Not even a nano-second," she admitted. "Which is stupid. I'm getting impressions of you, of Steve, even of MJ. But... I do not remember even a fraction of us being _married_." She looked over at him. "I suppose you're now going to tell me this is yet another reason I shouldn't stand in your way and let you run off with your bimbo…"

And then, words stopped coming out of her mouth as she stared into the photo he had held up in front of her. She looked gorgeous in it. It wasn't a wedding dress, but it was certainly a party gown. "Where did you get that?" she asked.

"You were wondering why there were no photos of you in this house." Stephen tapped the picture. "_This_ was in my bedroom."

She nodded. "I still don't remember any of it." Now she looked sheepish, realizing most of her assumptions were probably not even close to being correct. "Do you think we danced?"

"No," Stephen said. "That I can _definitely_ assert."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know. But I do."

Sarah was staring at the picture. "I remember there was food. I remember we were there. I remember feeling nervous..." She smiled just a little. "I remember hoping you liked my dress."

Stephen smirked. "How did we ever get from there to here?"

Sarah sat down and rubbed her temples hard.

Stephen started rubbing his temples again too. "This headache's going to drive me insane. Every so often, it feels like something inside my brain just snaps, and then suddenly I've got a connection to an old memory. What the Hell is happening to us?"

Sarah hesitated to tell him of her suspicions, then realized that he may be their key to surviving this whole thing. "You're going to think this is weird. I thought you were trying to kill me because you weren't acting like you were memory-impaired. I thought you were faking." She came over to him. "But you're _not_ faking. You're recovering from whatever was done to us." Now her eyes bore a mixture of fright and awe. "You think I'm psychic. I think _you_ are."

Stephen scoffed. "I can't read minds."

"Not all psychics do."

"How do you know?"

"Because something in my head keeps telling me that. " She shook her head. "And I've got the strangest feeling I learned that from you. It won't go away. Everywhere I look inside my head, there's a bunch of broken sticks and confused details…and then something you said, or somebody who sounds an awful lot like you said, floats through the confusion."

"O.K., assuming this is true, what kind of psychic am I?"

"A thought manipulator."

Now Stephen was laughing. "No, thought manipulation was what was done to _us_, so I'm hardly suspecting I can do any such thing…"

"What did you tell Steve to do?"

"Go upstairs and search a room I don't think I searched well enough."

"Steve doesn't trust you any further than he can throw you…and yet, he went upstairs. What did you tell MJ to do?"

"I told her to take him to that funny room."

"MJ hasn't taken her manicured nails off you since we came to, yet she marched upstairs because you ordered her to. I'm telling you, Peter, you're some kind of psychic manipulator, and that's why you're recovering your memory faster than everybody else. In which case…"

"…I really need to be leading any kind of charge," Stephen realized. "Where are Steve and MJ?"

Scene Break

"Penny for your thoughts," MJ offered.

"I'm getting the impression that's the only way I've got any money," Peter admitted. "Between the two of them, they put the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional'. No wonder they need a bodyguard--I probably keep them from killing each other."

"Maybe," MJ admitted. "He's certainly the king of paranoia."

"And she's the queen." He looked at her for a long moment, wanting to ask a question but not really daring to, even though he couldn't understand why. He had taken on men with guns single-handedly earlier, but couldn't figure out how to ask a pretty girl why she was hanging around with such a weird guy.

MJ shook her head. "I was about to say I had no idea what I saw in him, then realized I have no idea about pretty much anything right now."

Peter gave a goofy smile. "Maybe when all this is over, you'll know."

She smiled back.

Peter was just enchanted by that smile. There was something so warm and comforting in it, and it made him feel a hundred different things, all of them contradictory and none of them appropriate for the moment at hand…

…and then the strange sensation in the back of his head went from a rattle to a full-blown bass drum pounding. He looked right at a door.

"That's it," MJ whispered.

Peter didn't need the confirmation, but it was nice to get. There was someone in that room that wasn't supposed to be there, and he could swear he heard a gun being cocked…

…and then there was the sound of glass breaking behind the door.

Peter gave the door one kick, and it flew off its hinges. He raced into the room, but found it empty with the locked French doors broken open. "Get back downstairs!" he ordered MJ, then raced for the window.

MJ didn't need encouragement as she turned and ran for the staircase.

Peter got to the window, but the grounds were too dark to see where the assailant had gone. The broken trellis next to the window told him how the man had made his escape, though, and that was enough to give him a place to start. He looked down off the balcony, hesitating only a moment at the 10-foot drop below him, and decided to risk taking a leap to grab a nearby tree branch and make his way to the ground. _After all,_ he considered, _what good are superpowers if you don't use them?_

He stepped onto the balcony ledge and took a deep breath. "Tally ho," he said in an uncertain tone, then leapt into the tree.

The crashing sensation of disrupted limbs was the next thing he felt, and it took him a moment to realize that he'd come dangerously close to overshooting the tree in his leap and was now hanging on a limb that wasn't any closer to the ground than he had been before. _Well, that was brilliant,_ he chastised himself, then moved hand-over-hand toward the trunk of the tree and then started his descent.

By the time he got to the ground, whoever had escaped from the room was long gone. But another rattle hit his brain and he whirled just in time to see another group of thugs dressed like ninjas rushing back into the house. _Not again,_ he mentally moaned, then followed them back into the house.

In the rush to return to the house, he missed seeing Paul Brackett emerge from a shimmer of shadows on the balcony above. _All brawn, no brains,_ Brackett decided, smirking about getting the best of the supposedly amazing Spiderman for the umpteenth time today. Now that the latest hired help were on their way in and everybody was back on the ground floor, hopefully this whole affair would be over momentarily.

Scene Break

Stephen heard the glass break and the sound of wood splintering upstairs. "The Hell?" he said, grabbing his weapons off the table.

"Go," Sarah told him.

Stephen didn't need the encouragement to go, but found himself surprised to feel at least a bit uneasy about leaving his wife or whatever-she-was behind. That twinge only lasted a second, however. "Close the door and stay down," he ordered, then raced out of the room and up the center staircase to find out what was going on upstairs in his mansion.

Sarah took a moment to dig through the china cabinet and found some heavy pewter charger plates and a meat carving knife. She was pretty sure she couldn't have fired a gun even if her "beloved" husband had left one there for her, so it was nice to feel somewhat armed even with the most primitive of weapons.

Scene Break

Stephen met MJ at the top of the staircase. "What's going on?" he asked her.

"There _was_ somebody in there," MJ told him, still brandishing one of the silver guns. "He escaped out the window…Steve went after him…"

"Some help down here!" Peter's voice roared from down the stairs.

Stephen pumped the shotgun in his hands and tucked the other one under his arm. "MJ, get back into my room, lock the door, and shoot anyone who comes through that door without announcing himself."

MJ drew the other automatic and rushed for the bedroom as Stephen bolted back down the stairs.

Scene Break

Peter was in combat with six armed ninjas by the time Stephen found him. Stephen threw one shotgun down the stairs butt-first, where it slammed into the face of one man.

Stephen sat down on one of the handrails, lifted his feet, and slid down the stairs, kicking his feet and slamming his remaining shotgun at any men who were foolish enough to come up the stairs to take him on. As the staircase turned 90 degrees, Stephen leapt off one rail and hopped onto another, started his slide down to the ground floor, and spotted one of the men Peter had knocked out getting back to his feet. "Steve!" he shouted, tossing the shotgun toward him.

Peter caught the gun by the barrel and whipped around, swinging the gun like a baseball bat and knocking the man into a wall, then threw the gun back to Stephen.

Stephen leapt off the handrail and into the middle of the action, where he now found himself back-to-back with Peter.

Peter reached behind him and shoved a gap between the two of them as a gunshot cracked between them.

_Hm-m. Maybe we __do__ know each other as well as that picture implied,_ Stephen thought as he pointed the shotgun over his shoulder, where Peter caught the barrel and aimed it for him as he fired.

Peter kept his grip, pulled the shotgun away from Stephen, and hurled it javelin-like into the next man. Then he slipped a foot under the barrel of the first discarded shotgun and flipped it into the air.

Stephen caught it, cocked it, and fired it in one smooth motion.

Scene Break

Brackett listened carefully as the sounds of violence suddenly stopped. Reaching out with his mind he felt several chaotic thought patterns swirling back, including two he didn't want to feel. _Dammit._ If the two _had_ triumphed somehow, then they would be looking for him. Which meant _he_ needed a plan, and fast.

Scene Break

Stephen and Peter were back to back, with half a dozen dead or disabled bodies surrounding them. "Not bad, Steve," Stephen said over his shoulder.

"Not bad yourself, Pete," Peter returned.

The two men stood quietly for a moment, looking at the bodies to make sure none of them were moving right away, neither man sure what to say to the other at this point.

Stephen turned around first. "You're going to think this sounds crazy," he began.

"No, I won't," Peter reassured, not sure if he should remind the other man of how crazy _all_ of this was.

"We've done that before," Stephen said, not sure Peter wouldn't change his mind after hearing that.

"I'd say so," Peter nodded, glad that one of them was finally putting words to these weird happenings. "Maybe you're a superhero, too."

Stephen gave an uncomfortable laugh. "You're now the third person to reach that conclusion in an hour." He reached into his jacket pocket. "I wonder if this is some clue."

Peter turned around and looked at the photo Stephen had in his hands. "Whoa…"

"Yeah, that's what I said, too."

Peter studied the photo. "What am I doing with your camera bag?"

"What are you doing in my office to begin with?" Stephen replied.

Peter was starting to feel insulted again. "What makes you so sure it's _your_ office?"

Stephen rolled his eyes. This was getting ridiculous. "Like a bodyguard has an office?"

"Like a gazillionaire _needs_ one?"

Stephen was about to retort when a high-pitched electronic tone sounded. It was soft, and muffled, but it only took a second for him to recognize what it was…

…a cell phone.

Peter looked around. "The house phones are out. Where is _that_ coming from?"

"I don't know," Stephen admitted. "But we need to find it before it goes to voice mail on us and stops ringing."

The two men traced the sound to the parlor and began frantically opening drawers, peeking under furniture, and more.

Peter finally isolated the ringtone to the desk across the room. He reached the desk and started opening drawers, but it stopped ringing.

"Dammit," Stephen muttered.

Peter pulled on a drawer and found it locked. "Hang on," he said, then gave the drawer a hard jerk.

The drawer face broke off.

"If that's my antique desk," Stephen warned, "I'll be taking that out of your salary."

"If it's your desk, you're probably not paying me enough to take it out of my salary," Peter retorted, then reached inside the broken drawer. "Meanwhile…" He held up the cell phone. "…let's see who called." He flipped the phone open to check the display.

The display read "**HANDSET LOCKED--ENTER PIN TO CONTINUE**".

Peter groaned. "Locked. Got any idea what the PIN might be?"

Stephen looked at the phone. It was black, with touches of red on the edges. Which seemed odd, because his own clothing hues were coordinating shades of grey, Peter's were dull red, dull blue, and dingy white, and neither man looked like they were into goth-looking black items. But somehow the stark black phone had locked his attention into place, and he felt disjointed thoughts in his brain shaking around again…

…until something snapped and a connection was made. Stephen held out his hand.

Peter brought the phone over to him.

Stephen stared at it for a moment, then finally decided to risk associating the memory with the missing PIN. He tapped 1-3-8-5-3-4-3-6 on the keypad.

A beep sounded, and the phone's display showed a background image of red draped fabric with regular phone options on the screen.

Peter looked unnerved. "O.K., I want to know how you figured _that_ out."

Stephen wasn't sure how to explain it in a way that didn't sound completely insane. "There's a phrase echoing in my head. One evil…three generations."

"So?"

Stephen still couldn't believe it, but there was no denying now that he really was getting his memory back at a rate far exceeding any of the others. "When I looked at the display, I kept hearing the phone dial in my head. I was pretty sure I recognized the tones…and I did."

Peter looked confused. "You lost me on that one, Carnak."

Stephen actually felt himself becoming amused. "If I'm Carnak, does that make you Ed McMahon?"

"Hi-yo," Peter replied.

The two men laughed to relieve the tension, and then Stephen pointed to the phone keys. "One-E-V-L-Three-G-E-N," he said, gesturing over the keys.

Peter raised an eyebrow. "Wow. I'd have never gotten that in a million years."

"I doubt that," Stephen responded. "You zeroed in on that ringing faster than I could. Given a few minutes more, you'd have gotten this."

Peter wasn't sure he believed it, but at least the two of them weren't snapping at each other any more. "O.K., well, I guess we know whose phone this is. Know what the voicemail number is?"

Stephen studied the options on the display. "Probably under the button on the screen that reads 'Voicemail'."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Know-it-all."

"Damn straight." Stephen hesitated only for a moment, then pressed the "voicemail" button and put the phone to his ear.

"You have…one…new message," the automated voice responded. "First new message…"

"Hey, boss," a woman with a thick Queens accent said. "It's me. Hate to interrupt your orgy, but I had to make sure you won't be back before the eighth. My mom's in town and I really would rather not leave her at home while I work, because the last time I did, she redecorated my apartment and I really hate pastel and chintz. So, if you could stay out of town until at least the tenth, I'll be eternally grateful. Tell the groupies I said 'Hi'."

The message ended with a "beep" followed by a recent timestamp. "End of messages," the automated voice announced.

Stephen looked at Peter with an incredibly confused expression.

"What?" Peter asked.

Stephen shook his head. "Apparently it doesn't matter if I'm married to Sarah or not."

"Huh?"

"According to the caller, I'm her boss and apparently out of town throwing an orgy."

Peter gave him a dubious look. "Was I at least invited?"

Stephen started to roll his eyes when the sound of footsteps reached his ears. Any danger he might have perceived was confirmed when he saw Peter tense up as well.

Both men pressed their backs against the wall on opposite sides of the parlor door. Stephen armed his shotgun.

A second later, a man with a semi-automatic pistol opened the door. Quickly, he realized he wasn't alone and drew back through the doorway.

Both Stephen and Peter felt strange, as if a wave of vertigo suddenly came over them both. But as if they were now beginning to think in concert, they both realized the man with the gun was their _real_ enemy.

The vertigo faded, and both men were now on their feet. "Sarah and Andrew are still downstairs," Stephen said aloud.

"Got it," Peter said, already heading for the dining room.

Stephen raced up the stairs to stop the intruder before he reached MJ.

Scene Break

The intruder with the gun raced back toward the front door…

…and suddenly found himself face-to-face with a young Asian man, his head shaven and his clothing loose and dark, like a martial arts student.

Without hesitation, the gunman sprayed bullets at the new intruder.

The young Asian moved as if gravity had no effect on him as he leapt into the air and the bullets seemed to flow under and around him.

The gunman gasped, then ran for the dining room.

The Asian dropped to the ground and started to follow, then felt a blur of motion race by him. It took only a second for him to recognize it…and another second to spot another armed man running up the central staircase.

The Asian took only a moment to choose which figure to follow, and then he was off after the shotgun-armed Stephen, leaving super-fast Peter to handle the gun-wielding Paul Brackett.

Scene Break

Stephen reached the top of the staircase, the shotgun pointing the way ahead. "MJ!" he called.

"In here!" she called back.

Stephen took only a second to confirm she was still in the master bedroom, which was where he'd ordered her to go. Good. At least one thing was still going right.

"_**Stephen!**_"

The voice that called out the name of Sarah's bodyguard stopped Stephen in his tracks. It wasn't just in his ears…it was inside his mind. He whipped around and fired the shotgun at him. The young man vanished with a swirl of color and shadow, the moving wisps rearranging themselves at the head of the stairs, resolving themselves back into the young man at the head of the stairs. "Wait!"

Stephen did the opposite, pouncing for the Master Bedroom. "MJ! Don't shoot!"

He pounded the door open, cleared the bed in a leap and came down in a crouch behind the far side, MJ on his left.

The redhead pointed the automatic in her hand at the door, her other hand finding itself on Stephen's shoulder protectively.

There was movement in the doorway. MJ fired and missed. Neither of them were really clear on what the movement was.

The shotgun suddenly wrenched itself from Stephen's hands…and now he was unarmed and face-to-face with yet another ninja-robed intruder. And something inside his brain was now pressing behind his eyes so hard that he thought they might pop out.

The young man in front of him fixed a gaze on Stephen, and now Stephen felt a wave of energy surging toward him. The pressure behind his eyes doubled…

…and then he felt the pressure surge out as if he'd fired a weapon.

The two thought energies collided between the two men. Both of them took a step back from the impact.

Stephen looked shocked. Then he realized the young man in front of him was not so much shocked, but instead afraid. He didn't know _why_ he knew this, but he could feel the pressure inside his head ramping up again, stronger than ever, and he was pretty sure the resurgence had something to do with the fear he was sensing from the man before him. Despite the pain, he fixed his gaze right on the young man, trying to will that burst of energy out of his eyes once more.

The Asian quickly got hold of himself and met Stephen's gaze firmly. "_**No!**_"

Once more, Stephen felt that voice inside his mind, and he kept staring, trying to make that burst happen even harder now. But within a fraction of a second, something paralyzed him and completely disoriented him, and he toppled to the floor, his arms and legs completely useless and his equilibrium shot.

Then, he felt something swirling inside his brain, leaving nothing untouched. One snapping sensation echoed in his head…then another…then more of them, happening ever faster…

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" He yelled instinctively.

…and then suddenly, there was no more confusion. "_**Tulku?**_" Stephen's mind spoke.

Marpa Tulku came over to help his student sit up. "_**What is your name?**_" he queried, hoping for a confirmation that all of the errant memory threads had knit themselves back together.

"_**Stephen…**_" He looked over and found MJ still under one arm, with her body pressed protectively back behind his own.

MJ looked up at him, a myriad of realizations going behind her eyes.

They leaped apart in shock.

"Blessed mother of all that is sacred and true with all her wacky nephews!" MJ screeched. "I mean, you were, and I didn't, and he was...What the hell happened?!"

Stephen was as far as he could get from MJ. "Agh! I mean...oh mercy I need to put my eyes out."

"You can't do that!" MJ cried, pushing herself into the opposite corner of the room. "If you did, who would put my eyes out?"

"Okay, okay I'll put my left eye out then I'll put your eyes out then I'll take my other eye!"

"Good idea!" MJ yelped manically. "What shall we use, I mean how the hell did this...did we...?"

"If I may interrupt." The Tulku said calmly. "You may find that the source of this... confusion, is not quite as hard to explain as you might think."

"Brackett!" Stephen suddenly shouted.

"Who?" MJ asked, having forgotten their original mission breifly.

"Brackett." Confirmed the Tulku.

"Kill!" Stephen roared violently.

"Whoever he is, save me a piece!" MJ roared back.

"I know places to punch him that'll hurt for weeks!"

"Weeks?" MJ repeated violently, grabbing the nearest shotgun off the floor. "Like hell! He has to die, the monster must be made dead immediately!"

"No, no, no, you're talking crazy talk MJ; he has to suffer before he dies."

"Dont call me MJ!" Mary Jane freaked out.

"It's your name!" Stephen protested.

Beat.

"Yes! Yes it is!" MJ agreed, turning truly bloodthirsty. "Can we kill him fast and still make it horrible?"

"Yes!" Stephen pounced, onto this idea instantly. "A swift and horrible death! I can do that!"

"Swift and horrible death!" MJ repeated viciously.

Stephen picked up the second shotgun, looked at it, then spun on MJ. "Give me my guns back!" He yelled shrilly.

MJ found she was still wearing the holsters and silver 45s; and threw the shotgun away, clawing at the buckles like she was on fire. "Agh! SorrySorrySorry!" She got them off, snatched the second shotgun off Stephen and slung it over her shoulder. "Swift and horrible death!" She yelled, snatching up the first shotgun.

"Swift and horrible death!" Stephen yelled back and put his slouch hat on.

The Tulku grabbed his arm. "_**Brackett is still downstairs. Where is everyone else?**_"

Stephen pointed to his bedroom. "_**Sarah and Andrew are downstairs…Peter, I don't know**_."

The Tulku nodded. "_**I will undo the memory erasures. You take on Brackett or any other hostile you find.**_"

Stephen's anger was now a palpable force. _Nobody_ embarrassed The Shadow on his home turf. He let out a terrifying, echoing laugh, and then swirled into the shadows.

Scene Break

While war was declared upstairs, Paul Brackett was ducking into the dining room, determined to put a stop to an operation that had gone on way too long already. _Curse that idiot Canadian Mongolian or whatever-the-Hell his __real__ nationality is_, Brackett mentally seethed. _He said his men would be able to handle this in no time flat, he knew Cranston, he knew the layout, he knew everything. When all of this is done, I'm going to find that idiot and wipe away __his__ identity, too_.

Sarah looked up from changing Andrew's dressing on the floor as she spotted Brackett racing into the room and screamed.

Brackett fixed a gaze on her to shut her mouth.

Sarah's scream stopped and her eyes glazed over.

Brackett aimed his weapon at her to shut her mouth once and for all…

"Stop!" A voice called from behind, and then Brackett felt something sticky smack him with such force that he lost his footing and fell to the floor.

Sarah's vision cleared, and she looked up...

…to see Peter standing in the doorway and a thick mass of what looked like a cross between fishing net and silk thread connecting Peter's arm to Brackett's head and shoulders. And Peter looked as startled as Sarah did.

It was Sarah who found her voice first. "What, are you some kind of spider?" she said, not sure why the phrase came to her head but knowing that she _absolutely_ had seen that netting somewhere before.

Her words triggered something inside Peter's memory, and now _he_ was starting to feel connections returning.

Brackett, meanwhile, had managed to get his senses back and turned his gaze toward Peter…

…who yanked him up from the floor by the webbing and slung him through the dining room windows.

With Brackett now dispatched, Peter yanked the sticky netting off his wrist and ran over to get Andrew to his feet. "We've got to get upstairs…," Peter began.

"Look out!' Sarah yelled again.

Peter whirled around to see that their escape route had once more been cut off, this time by an Asian teen with a shaved head standing in the doorway. Thinking fast, Peter grabbed a dining room chair and hurled it at the figure in the doorway.

Marpa Tulku bulls-eyed the chair in midair with a telekinetic blast, shattering it into so much kindling.

_Great,_ Peter realized. _Another__ superhero. Don't we have enough of those running around here?_

Then, he dismissed the mental complaint and practically leapt across the room to take out this new intruder.

With a mere thought and gesture, The Tulku's powerful psyche caught Peter in mid-leap and flung him up to the ceiling…

…which Peter instinctively grabbed onto with his fingers splayed wide, and now he was posed above everyone's heads in a perfect yoga asana. _What the…?_

"Whoa!" Sarah said, shocked.

The Tulku closed his eyes and concentrated hard, spinning a thought energy vortex to encompass the whole room.

Sarah's vision fogged, then suddenly became clear. "What the…?" She looked at all the expensive jewelry she was wearing, and then the events of the past few hours began to blend with her true sense of identity. "_Mrs._ Cranston?" She shouted, half alarmed and half infuriated. "Oh, no way!"

Peter's memory returned at almost the exact same moment. He shook his head as he looked down at The Tulku. "That's it," he declared. "We're taking up a collection to put up razor wire fences around all of your students' temples."

The Tulku started to answer when suddenly he saw Brackett leaning in the window that Peter had tossed him through.

"Get down!" Peter shouted, diving across the room for Sarah.

A second later, the room filled with gunfire and maniacal laughter.

When the firing stopped, Brackett was slumped inside the window, dead.

A moment later, Stephen Cranston swirled back into visibility. "Everybody all right in here?" he asked, silver .45 pistols still held in a firing posture.

Sarah wasn't sure whether she should be nodding or not, based on her memory of the out-of-character things that had gone down over the past few hours. But nod she did.

"Ask her yourself," MJ called out, pushing her way past Stephen to get into the dining room.

"Where have you been all this time?" Peter asked in sheer relief.

Stephen sighed. "My bedroom."

"Of course she was." Sarah mumbled darkly

She and Peter took only a moment to share a _do you have any idea what you did last night?_ look, then they locked lips in the most passionate kiss either of them had ever shared.

Marpa Tulku cleared his throat. "_**One of Brackett's men is still breathing,**_" he pointed out, gesturing to the hallway.

Stephen led the way out into the foyer where the bodies of the six intruders that Peter and Stephen had taken out were still lying. One of them was indeed breathing and moving.

Stephen readied his .45s as the man stirred.

The man, also a shaved-headed Asian sporting a Fu Manchu mustache and beard, looked at Stephen with eyes that knew the end was near. "Ying Ko…," he whispered softly, knowing that this ending would be far more merciful than the punishment his own master would inflict for his failure.

Stephen's eyes bugged out. He'd seen that face too many times _not_ to recognize it. "Shan Ruche!"

Kuba Khan's number-one henchman nodded, still waiting for the killing blow.

"Khan set this up?" Peter realized.

The Tulku nodded. "_**I tried to get through to you several times, but the phones were dead. That was when I knew I had to hurry, because Khan would keep sending men as long as Brackett had you under his control.**_"

Stephen aimed a .45 at the center of Ruche's forehead.

The two men stared at each other, each knowing what the other had to do…

…and then Stephen made his move. "_**Sleep.**_"

Ruche's eyes fluttered and he passed out.

"What did you do _that_ for?" Peter demanded.

Stephen re-holstered his pistols. "Because I know who I am." He turned to The Tulku. "_**Take him to one of your halfway houses. I'll deal with him later.**_"

And with that, he turned and headed back for the dining room to deal with Andrew.

The Tulku shrugged, then scooped up Ruche and was out the front door so swiftly and silently that it was as if he'd never even been there in the first place.

MJ looked a little confused. "So…should I call the special police squad, or should somebody go dump Brackett's body in the East River?"

"I'll take care of it," Peter said, heading outside to scoop up Brackett.

MJ and Sarah were now left alone. "Uh…so," MJ began.

"Yeah," Sarah replied, not sure how to even begin to categorize the memories she had. "Listen, Stephen has; somewhere downstairs, the LARGEST bottle of scotch in the Northern Hemisphere. I mean, this is a galactic big bottle, we're talking Guinness World Record big here..."

MJ looked oddly confused. "But... what will _you _drink?"

"I hear ya," Sarah sighed.

Scene Break

Peter carried Brackett, and Stephen carried Andrew out to the cab, where Moe looked over in shock. "Okay." The cabbie asked slowly. "What did I miss?"

"It was quite a night." Stephen admitted.

Peter stuck Brackett in the trunk, Stephen laid Andrew out across the backseat. "Take Andrew to the hospital, then take Peter to the Classic, and after that; wherever he tells you to take him and the body."

Stephen closed the door, Peter closed the trunk.

Both of them looked at each other for a moment.

"So is this going to screw things up too much?" Peter asked finally.

"Nah, it'll screw things up the usual amount." Stephen waved him off. "I know what you're thinking though, and you don't have to worry about me and MJ."

"Actually, you might want to try again, because what I was really thinking was: What if Gwen had been here too?"

Stephen winced. "Oh man."

"Yeah."

Scene Break

"Okay." Marsh said. "The official story will be that his butler was at the Cobalt Club, on his way in to speak to someone about your standing reservation at the bar, and the restaurant. On the way there, he was attacked by Brackett, who was looking for keys, pass codes, and other things to let himself into the Mansion. Given the evidence, the official decision will be that he was looking either for evidence you guys had gathered, or for account details and identification he could steal. The butler resisted, and both were shot; Brackett fatally."

Peter nodded. "Sounds about right. Print a retraction tomorrow saying that Sarah wrote the Brackett article in today's paper; the police will find the body somewhere near the Cobalt Club. I'll give you and the cops the internal memos for Stephen's house staff saying that the Manor was empty. All things considered, that should be enough."

"You okay?" Marsh asked. "You look like you've been put through a washing machine."

"You should see the other guy."

"Stephen's butler going to be okay?"

"Yeah." Peter sighed. "And his name is Andrew."

Scene Break

"He's a good kisser," MJ admitted, tossing back her drink.

"I know," Sarah reminded her, annoyed.

"Peter's better." MJ slurred slightly.

"Upside down maybe; I know." Sarah responded.

"You do?" MJ sobered slightly.

"No I don't."

The two women were still looking at each other. MJ gestured. "The look suits you."

Sarah finally noticed herself started pulling off the expensive jewelry. "The look of a haughty suspicious trophy?"

MJ smiled, slightly tipsy. "The look of a millionaire's wife."

"Says the perfume model he picks to be cheating on me with one day."

MJ gave her a startled look, somewhere between hurt and guilty.

"Sorry MJ." Sarah sighed. "I'm still far too sober to put all of this into any kind of context."

Scene Break

Shan Ruche woke up sharply as a glass of ice water was thrown in his face. He spluttered awake... to see The Shadow glaring balefully down at him.

_Oh help... _The warrior thought bleakly.

_**"Why was Brackett working for Khan?"**_

Ruche merely looked at him

_**"We have done this before Shan. Every time, you give in. You aren't giving me anything that I haven't already got; or couldn't get elsewhere. You already know I'm not going to kill you..."**_

"A weakness on your part."

_**"Why was Brackett working for Khan?"**_

"He would give us a cut, and in exchange, we gave him protection."

_**"Khan can get money a thousand different ways. Why something so risky. He had to know I'd be onto it sooner or later."**_

"Targeting you was not approved by my master." Ruche told him. "When he reported you had lost your memory, we were dispatched to kill you immediately."

_**"You were already in New York?"**_

"To bring Brackett to Khan."

_**"Why? If he was exposed as a criminal, then what would Khan want with him as a fugitive?"**_

"His skills. A memory eraser that can make even the great Ying Ko forget."

The Shadow shuddered. _**"Khan is recruiting."**_

Shan said nothing, realizing he had given away more than he intended.

_**"Sleep now."**_ The Shadow commanded. _**"When you wake up, you will be in Khan's court, and you can explain to him how you let Brackett die."**_

Shan shivered as he passed out again.

The Shadow removed his hat and cloak in the cab ride back to the Manor. He was silent the whole trip.

But inwardly Stephen was reliving the moment before he recovered his memory. Unknowingly, he had launched a mental attack against the Tulku.

And the sensei was afraid.

Scene Break

"He's got good taste in jewelry," Sarah noted, studying her reflection in the diamond necklace.

"I know," MJ replied.

"You do?" Sarah responded, harsher than she intended. "How?"

MJ held up her agent's ring. "It _is_ pretty."

Sarah relaxed. "Yeah, it is." She shook her head as she left the pile of riches on the floor.

MJ chuckled.

Sarah looked up from her glass. "What?"

"Peter's first instinct was to protect the damsels. Stephen's first instinct was to attack the villains. My first instinct was to fall in love with 'Peter' and yours was to lay claim to Stephen… and yell at him."

Sarah picked up the mink and threw it at MJ.

_**"If you are quite finished in there, would you mind coming into my office?"**_

MJ glanced over at Sarah. She hadn't heard him. It was a private message. She got up and went into Stephen's office.

He was waiting for her. "Hey." He said. "Listen, Peter doesn't suspect anything. He hasn't stopped laughing since you got your memory back."

"I think Sarah was starting to realize..."

"That's because she realized we were telepathic." Stephen said quietly. "She was getting memory flashes of... well of me teaching her the differences between types of telepathy... I was getting flashes of fighting alongside Peter... and of those nights with you."

"So was I." MJ looked down. "Does Sarah think..."

"No. If she does she isn't going to say anything anyway. She's feeling too stupid about calling herself Sarah Cranston."

"It could happen." MJ licked her lips. "Yeah... Stephen, it was a one in a million chance that this would happen."

"More than a million."

"And even longer odds that the memory you would pick up would be us..."

"Also true."

"So... I mean... we shouldn't feel guilty right?"

"Right."

Scene Break

Peter was talking to Sarah as she came back into the foyer.

"Still..." Sarah smiled for the first time that night. "I wish I could have seen his face when she got her memory back."

Peter laughed as MJ joined them.

"What's up?"

Peter nodded at Sarah as MJ slid her arms around his waist. "I was just telling Sarah. Moe's outside, he's ready to take you both home." he glanced at her with a slight grin. "That is, unless you'd rather come back with me."

MJ smiled vacantly. "Any other night I would Tiger, but I'm a little too drunk to go through motions like that. Might mess a make." Beat. "Make a mess."

Peter chuckled warmly. "Okay. See you soon." He went into Stephen's office.

Leaving Sarah and MJ alone as they headed out.

"Moe have any trouble?"

"Nah. He got the story from Stephen and Peter as they took Brackett away. He can't believe he missed all this."

Sarah sighed. "Is this ever going to be…"

"No," MJ interjected. "At least, not for a long time."

"O.K.," Sarah agreed, as thought that was enough. Then she looked nervous again. "How long-"

"Old and grey Sarah, old and grey."

The two women left the mansion together, determined to collect the largest collection of alcohol in Manhattan to put this night behind them.

**THE END**


End file.

Shadow, Adventure, Humor